What Is Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”?

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism, died in London on June 6, 1832, at the age of 84. In the last version of his will, dated May 30, one week before his death, Bentham bequeathed his body to his friend Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith, instructing him and Bentham’s executor to arrange for its dissection to benefit medical science. Bentham’s will also directed that, following the dissection, his skeleton and mummified head be dressed in his clothes and hat, positioned with his chair and staff “in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought,” and placed within “an appropriate box or case” for viewing.

Beginning in the year before his death, Bentham had written a pamphlet, Auto-Icon; or, Farther Uses of the Dead to the Living, in which he advocated, on utilitarian grounds, the practice of becoming one’s own icon (thus “auto-icon”) in the manner he envisaged for himself: dissection followed by the display of a near-replica of the original person, constructed out of a skeleton, stuffing such as hay, and a mummified head. The dissection, he argued, would advance scientific knowledge and greatly facilitate medical education (in Bentham’s day, cadavers for medical education were extremely difficult to obtain). The display of auto-icons would, among other benefits, reduce the need for paintings, statues, and other monuments as remembrances of people (because “identity [is] preferable to similitude”), eliminate the danger posed to public health by accumulating corpses, and “diminish the horrors of death” by leaving only its “agreeable associations.”

Unfortunately for Bentham, the attempt to mummify his head went badly, leaving the skin on his face discoloured and stretched. Accordingly, the mummified head was replaced by a head made of wax. Bentham’s auto-icon was acquired by University College London (UCL) in 1850 and was subsequently displayed there. The mummified head was first placed between the icon’s feet, then stored in a nearby box, then finally put in a safe at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. The auto-icon remains on display today.