New online publication: ‘A Visit (in 1831) to Jeremy Bentham’, by George Wheatley

The Bentham Project has published online for the first time the text of George Wheatley’s A Visit (in 1831) to Jeremy Bentham. Wheatley’s work, which describes in detail his visit to Queen’s Square Place, Bentham’s residence in Westminster, is also available as an open-access text in PDF or XML format from UCL Discovery.

Upon the death of his father Jeremiah in 1792, Bentham inherited the family home in Queen’s Square Place. Bentham referred to his abode as the Hermitage and himself as the Hermit. Despite this apparent reclusiveness, many notable statesmen, politicians, lawyers, and intellectuals visited him, although some equally prominent figures (such as Madame de Staël) were refused an audience. Apart from half the year spent at another notable Bentham residence, Ford Abbey, between 1814 and 1818, Bentham spent the majority of his later years at Queen’s Square Place. He died within its walls, aged 84, on 6 June 1832.

Bentham’s house was demolished in the 1880s. The site is now occupied by 102 Petty France, otherwise known as the building which houses the Ministry of Justice. Between 1978 and 2004 this building (then known as 50 Queen Anne’s Gate) was the main location of the Home Office. On 12 October 2004, Councillor Catherine Longworth, Lord Mayor of Westminster, and Professor Malcolm Grant, President and Provost of UCL, unveiled a commemorative plaque to Jeremy Bentham on the gateway of the building.

We are sure that this text will prove extremely popular amongst Bentham enthusiasts, since Wheatley provides a rich first-hand account of both the house (such as the front garden or ‘paddock’, the steam central-heating, and Bentham’s ‘workshop’ with attendant ‘platform’ and ‘ditch’) and its permanent and temporary inhabitants (such as Bentham himself, his secretaries, and his visitors). Details are given about Bentham’s peculiar meal times (and his ‘preprandial circumgyration’, when he did his pre-dinner jogging) as well as descriptions of the dishes served. Illumination is also given to Bentham’s working practices, such as his unique ink-conserving writing style and his preference for ‘preaching’ (dictating to an amanuensis) whilst being shaved.

The text has been transcribed and lightly annotated from the original which was privately printed in about 1853. It contains a brief editorial introduction by Dr Kris Grint.