Bentham's bonce

[oursin]

Further to extensive discussions on my last post about JB's auto-icon.

I'm pretty sure that the actual head has been photoshopped in to the image I posted, because last I heard it was kept in a vault at UCL (in fact, I think somewhere in the archive store) because, not only did it rapidly demonstrate the limitations of Victorian mummification techniques and become extremely grotesque, sometime during the 1980s it became infested with carpet-beetle and had to undergo extensive and specialised conservation treatment.

(And everyone will be getting Bentham keyrings from me for Christmas, hmmmm?)

ETA MI BENTHAM LOLTHEORISTZ, LET ME SHOW U THEM (from my mad lol-thing phase last summer).

Comments

[serrana.livejournal.com]

No, no, they can't have Photoshopped it twice (http://www.michealfelker.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/bentham.JPG), can they?

(*snerk* "Extensive discussions." You're so diplomatic. ;> )

And, in re. who does it -- yep, I'd vote for conservationists who deal with anthropological specimens. You see a lot of bits of dead folks in the basement of the anthropology museum...(I am still bemused by the UCL hierarchy deciding not to display the head because it's disrespectful to human remains. But having the rest of his corpse sitting there is JUST FINE.)

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

(We're not banned for life? SCORE)

(I am still bemused by the UCL hierarchy deciding not to display the head because it's disrespectful to human remains. But having the rest of his corpse sitting there is JUST FINE.)

I KNOW
I KNOW

THE REMAINS OF HIS REMAINS ARE SITTING RIGHT THERE, UCL
HEADLESSLY

[serrana.livejournal.com]

(Well, not yet, anyway.)

Human remains: totally respectful, as long as they're decently clothed. And not infested with beetles.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

....I misread 'respectful' as 'respectable' and was going to make a crack about conventionality....

[oursin.livejournal.com]

That looks like a fairly old photo - though I thought the head was kept in a box rather than out in the open.

I think the 'disrespectful' thing might come from the whole 'Kings College keep nicking it and using it as a football' element. (Which, when you think that Kings was founded specifically as a rebuke to the Godless Institution of Gower St and was all about subscribing to the 39 articles - Dissenters? Atheists? Utilitarians? Jews? DO. NOT. WANT. - is really not the way round one would expect it to be.)

[serrana.livejournal.com]

I think the box was post-1930s.

Really, we need to work up a Jeremy Bentham's head timeline.