Box 122 contains material relating to Bentham’s unrealised panopticon penitentiary scheme.

The panopticon was first rejected in 1803 as a solution to the problem of treating criminals, and Bentham himself had come to accept this. In June 1808, he told his brother, Samuel, that ‘JB has next to no expectation of panopticon being set on foot … and at his time of life scarce a wish about it: but that with him it has never been more than secondary object, his primary object being a reform in the state of the law’.

However, at the end of 1807, the commissioners for auditing the public accounts requested that Bentham account for £2,000 of public money voted to him 1794, for purchasing a site for the panopticon. The result was a lengthy and acrimonious correspondence, some of which can be found amongst these manuscripts: Bentham found it difficult to comply with request, not least owing to the passage of time, and his own (and Samuel’s) haphazard account-keeping.

Bentham supplied some documentation, but this did not satisfy the commissioners. He asked them to accept his verbal testimony, and gradually felt persecuted by their actions: hadn’t the government given him enough pain over the panopticon? He wrote another account of his treatment, bemoaning the unaccountability of the board, and suggesting that he was being subjected to ‘the principles of a Venetian Senate … or a Spanish Inquisition’. Fortunately, the audit board finally accepted Bentham’s testimony in December 1808.

The following year, the panopticon – somehow – was back on the agenda. Criminals were being convicted at ever-increasing rates, the hulks were notoriously bad, and New South Wales was being viewed as an Arcadia for criminals, rather than a place of punishment. Bentham was not enthusiastic, though William Wilberforce told Bentham that he was once more promoting the panopticon. During 1810 there did seem to be chance of the panopticon succeeding, against all the odds: a committee was appointed to consider the 1779 and 1794 Penitentiary Acts.

Bentham’s initial wariness turned to hope. He gave evidence before the committee, before occasionally hostile questioning. Bentham was ultimately disappointed when the committee’s report criticised his ideas and plans, and he returned to complaining of sinister interests and ‘an originally preconcerted plan for setting aside Panopticon’. Following this, Bentham submitted a claim for an astonishing £689,062 11s. compensation, for lost profits he supposed he would have earned from the panopticon between 1795 and 1813. Bentham finally settled for the not inconsiderable sum of £23,000. The panopticon scheme was finally dead.

The material is arranged as follows:

• Folios 1 to 30 : Panopticon – Business correspondence, bills, receipts [1793-1800]
• Folios 31 to 105 : Panopticon – audit office correspondence [1807-09]
• Folios 106 to 159 : Panopticon correspondence [1808, 1817]
• Folios 160 to 226 : Panopticon – Queries submitted by the Accountant, Jeremy Bentham to the Audit Board [1808]
• Folios 227-299 : Panopticon – Audit office, To Mallet on official responsibility [1808]
• Folios 300 to 328 : Arrangements humbly suggested to the Commissioners of the Audit Board in the character of remedies to certain defects in the practice of that judiciary [1808]
• Folios 329 to 346 : Panopticon – Mr Bentham’s compensation claim on the Treasury, marginal summaries and notes [1813]
• Folios 347 to 350 : Panopticon – Notes of the meetings of the arbitrators on the compensation claim [1813]
• Folios 351 to 486 : Panopticon – Compensation claim [1813]
• Folios 487 to 533 : Panopticon – Statement prepared by Jeremy Bentham as a claim for compensation [1813]
• Folio 534 : Panopticon – correspondence, W.D. Evans to JB [1814]