Sound the klaxon, we have new material on the Transcription Desk! Five new boxes are now available for any new or existing transcribers to explore. Boxes 13, 26, 54, 60 and 81 have been uploaded. This means that we now have 80 boxes and more than 40,000(!) pages of Bentham’s writings on our Transcription Desk.

These new boxes contain a mixture of Bentham’s correspondence and legal writings. Much of the material reflects Bentham’s fascincation with rising new democracies in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. In the early nineteenth century, Bentham was keen to play a direct role in the codification of new systems of law in these regions. These papers also include various elements of Bentham’s crusade for legal reform. He wanted to tighten the jury selection process and had the idea of using petitions to compel the British Parliament to remodel the judicial establishment.

More information on the contents of each of these boxes and access to the manuscripts can be found on the following pages:

Box 13 – correspondence

Box 26 – juries

Box 54 – legal procedure

Box 60 – Latin America

Box 81 – petitions

Users can also view pages from these boxes through the Untranscribed Manuscripts page.

We invite you to take a look through these boxes and see what you can find to transcribe. Why did Bentham feel that packed juries obstructed liberty of the press? How convincing were his plans to codify new laws in Spain and Portugal? Could you have been persuaded to sign one of Bentham’s petitions calling for legal reform?

We’re here today with some exciting news – seven new boxes of Bentham manuscripts have just been added to the Transcription Desk! The new material is contained in boxes 12, 14, 16, 32, 47, 52 and 75. These boxes consist of 2695 new images of Bentham’s writings – freshly uploaded and ready for any volunteers to explore and transcribe.

These boxes contain intriguing material for anyone interested in Bentham’s life and work. We have Bentham’s correspondence with close friends and international acquaintances from the United States, South America, Egypt and Greece. Bentham’s drafts of civil, criminal and procedure codes are also available – these formed part of his plan for a ‘Pannomion’ or complete code of law. We also have Bentham’s writings on ethics and human psychology, which are considered crucial to his theory of utilitarianism.

More information on the contents of each of these boxes and access to the manuscripts can be found on the following pages:

Box 12 – correspondence

Box 14 – writings on deontology and ethics

Box 16 – criminal code

Box 32 – civil code

Box 47 – evidence

Box 52 – procedure code

Box 75 – legal reform

Users can also view pages from these boxes through the Untranscribed Manuscripts page.

We look forward to seeing how our volunteers get on with this material – which papers will be most popular and what new insights will be uncovered?

Welcome along to the Transcribe Bentham progress update for the period 8 to 14 November 2014. During the last seven days not only have volunteer transcribers made further terrific progress, but a whole host of new manuscript images have been uploaded to the Transcription Desk (but more on that later).

11,502 manuscripts have now been transcribed or partially-transcribed, which is an increase of 102 on this time last week. Of these transcripts, 10,434 (91%) have been checked and approved by TB staff.

The more detailed state of progress is as follows:

 

Box	No. of manuscripts worked on	No. of manuscripts in box	Completion
Box 1	225	794	28%
Box 2	470	753	62%
Box 4	0	694	0%
Box 5	199	290	68%
Box 7	0	167	0%
Box 8	0	284	0%
Box 9	6	266	1%
Box 15	75	914	9%
Box 18	3	192	1%
Box 27	350	350	100%
Box 29	22	122	18%
Box 30	1	193	1%
Box 31	18	302	5%
Box 34	38	398	9%
Box 35	286	439	65%
Box 36	32	418	7%
Box 37	31	487	6%
Box 38	59	424	13%
Box 39	11	282	3%
Box 41	83	528	14%
Box 42	79	910	8%
Box 44	52	201	25%
Box 50	166	198	83%
Box 51	379	940	40%
Box 57	18	420	4%
Box 62	57	565	10%
Box 63	120	345	34%
Box 70	301	350	86%
Box 71	663	663	100%
Box 72	613	664	92%
Box 73	151	151	100%
Box 79	199	199	100%
Box 95	126	147	85%
Box 96	534	539	99%
Box 97	127	296	42%
Box 98	220	499	44%
Box 100	190	422	42%
Box 106	0	581	0%
Box 107	500	538	92%
Box 110	2	671	1%
Box 115	276	307	89%
Box 116	505	864	58%
Box 117	360	853	42%
Box 118	240	880	27%
Box 119	522	990	52%
Box 120	18	686	2%
Box 121	132	526	24%
Box 122	302	717	41%
Box 123	17	443	3%
Box 139	40	40	100%
Box 149	1	581	0%
Box 150	233	972	23%
Box 169	187	728	25%
Add MSS 537	729	744	97%
Add MSS 538	625	858	72%
Add MSS 539	686	948	72%
Box 540	3	1012	1%
Add MSS 541	220	1258	17%
Overall	11,502	26,796	44%

During the week, another 4,500 images have been uploaded for transcription, covering an enormous variety of subjects.

Box 540 contains correspondence to and from Bentham, and his family and friends, during the years 1784 to 1788. During this period, Jeremy travelled to Russia to visit his younger brother, Samuel, whom he had not seen for the best part of six years, and the letters feature details of Jeremy’s long and eventful journey, as well as the first inklings of the panopticon scheme. Box 4 details Bentham’s response to the Henry Brougham, the Lord Chancellor’s establishment of bankruptcy courts, Box 7 deals with Bentham’s writings on religion and education, while Box 8 covers some of Bentham’s thoughts on colonies and colonisation.

A number of these boxes contain a miscellany of material. Box 9 includes correspondence, the 1824 codicil to Bentham’s will, and John Bowring’s Memoir of Jeremy Bentham, which was memorably described by Leslie Stephen as ‘one of the worst biographies in the [English] language, out of materials which might have served for a masterpiece’. Box 106 contains Bentham’s detailed plans for a refrigerator which he called the ‘Frigidarium’, a discussion of the liberty of the press, plans for a network of ‘conversation tubes’ which would allow the panopticon inspector to speak to any prisoner in their cell, and part of the journal of Bentham’s secretary, John Flowerdew Colls. Box 110 contains some of Bentham’s constitutional proposals for Portugal, Spain and Greece, as well as European poetry and literature collected by Bentham’s literary executor, John Bowring. Finally, Box 149 includes parts and fragments of a number of works, a little about the auto-icon, the 1831 codicil to Bentham’s will, and a description of Bentham’s illnesses during 1826.

We hope that you enjoy looking through this material, and please do let us know if you have any questions about it! More will follow in the next week or so, and there’s no shortage of fascinating material to work through. Thanks to our colleagues at UCL Creative Media Services for digitising the manuscripts, and at the University of London Computer Centre for uploading them.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who has donated their time so generously to TB during the last seven days. It remains as greatly appreciated as ever.

It’s just under a week before Santa comes to visit, but we are delighted to be able to provide transcribers and readers with an early Christmas gift. Two further batches of digitised Bentham manuscripts have been uploaded to the Transcription Desk, both of which pertain to Bentham’s unrealised panopticon penitentiary scheme, which so dominated his life for a number of years.

Box 117 is largely comprised of collectanea, including correspondence, a drawing of the ‘sawing machine’ designed by Bentham’s younger brother, Samuel, and Bentham’s account of his frustrating attempts to purchase the Millbank estate from the Marquis of Salisbury. It also includes Bentham’s letters to George Holford MP, the anti-Benthamite chair of the 1811 Penitentiary Committee, which gave a damning indictment of the panopticon scheme in its report.

Box 119 contains a number of interesting items about the details of the panopticon, including how the prisoners would be employed, how the panopticon would be run by contract management,and how the prison itself would be centrally heated (these manuscripts contain a few rudimentary diagrams of the heating system composed by Bentham). Bentham addresses objections which he expected to be made against the panopticon, and the bulk of the box is comprised of Bentham’s draft penitentiary bill.

Box 119 also contains several drawings and sketches of the panopticon drawn by the architect Willey Reveley, who was commissioned by Bentham to produce the plans based on his designs. A few of these are currently missing, as the manuscripts are on loan to a gallery in Italy, but will be digitised upon their return. A notable sketch is the one below, drawn up by Bentham, in which he reproduces Psalm 139; Bentham was not a believer, but the panopticon intended, to all intents and purposes, to give the prison inspector all the power of a god within the penitentiary.

We hope that you enjoy exploring this material! With our thanks, as always, to our colleagues at UCL Creative Media Services and the University of London Computer Centre, for respectively capturing and uploading the images. Do contact us if you have any questions.

 

We are delighted to say that two new batches of material have been uploaded to the Transcription Desk for volunteers to explore and transcribe.

Box 1 contains material pertaining to Bentham’s annuity notes scheme, and date from 1799 to 1801. Bentham spent almost twelve months planning, drafting, and revising a major work entitled A Tract Intituled [sic] Circulating Annuities, which has never been published (though a précis of the text was provided in a work entitled Abstract or Compressed View of a Tract intituled [sic] Circulating Annuities). Bentham hoped that his plan for an interest-bearing circulating currency would provide the means both to reduce, and even eliminate, the national debt, and to inculcate the culture of saving amongst the poor, thus preserving the stability of expectations from the political and financial threats of revolution and national bankruptcy respectively.

The Bentham Project’s Dr Michael Quinn, is currently working on Bentham’s writings on political economy, and an unexpurgated text of Bentham’s Annuity Note scheme will present an exciting resource to scholars and historians of economic thought alike. The work of Transcribe Bentham volunteers has the potential to significantly expedite work on this material, and contribute to its first publication in a forthcoming volume of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.

The second batch of material is Box 5, pertaining to one of Bentham’s works on religion, Church of Englandism and Its Catechism Examined (1818). This work was part of Bentham’s sustained attack on the English political, legal, and ecclesiastical establishments. Bentham always argued that religion should bear no influence upon morals and legislation, and came to suggest that religious belief was used by the clergy to promote their own interests. Bentham was particularly critical of the role of the Church of England in education, whether this was in its schools for the poor, or its domination of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (the ‘two public nuisances’, according to Bentham, ‘storehouses and nurseries of political corruption’). In Church-of-Englandism, Bentham recommended the ‘euthanasia’ of the Church, that is, as ecclesiastical offices became vacant, they should be left unfilled and abolished.

We hope that you enjoy transcribing these manuscripts, and do let us know if you have any queries!