The Embalmed body of Jeremy Bentham

I thought I heard it all, but this is by far, the most bizarre story I’ve heard in a long time.  In the University College London in the main building of the college is a polished wood-paneled cabinet holding the embalmed body of its founder, Jeremy Bentham.  Jeremy was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. Born to a wealthy family in 1748 and educated at Westminster School, and Queens College, and Oxford. Because he was wealthy he had nothing but time to dedicate to study and writing. According to a contemporary, William Hazlitt, Jeremy became a hermit for forty years…”reducing law to a system, and the mind of a man to a machine.” In 1789 he publishes his first book, “Introduction to the Principles of Morals,” and establishes the principles of utilitarianism.

Bentham died on June 6, 1832 and he left his entire estate to the University College London under one condition, that his body be wheeled into the college’s board meetings! Wow, ok…. His body is embalmed and sits in a cabinet at the college, and yes it attends the board meetings.  Bentham is listed on the minutes as “present but not voting.”  So if you ever walk into this college, you will see Bentham’s embalmed body on a chair and dressed in a black jacket, fawn breeches, and straw-colored hat, and holding a stick. His real head was damaged when they tried to embalm it, so they used a wax head instead.  The real head was kept in a case for many years but students kept stealing it for pranks. It is now locked away in a vault; although I’ve read about, and seen pictures of his head in a jar, which is placed at his feet. Ewww!

Why did this man wish to be kept out like this? Board meetings, hmmm, guess he wanted to be sure his money was being used for the right thing.   It’s a sure way to be immortalized.  Well let’s just say the dude was eccentric. The college did what it had to do to get the money, but still I can’t help but think this story to be…. well, gross, macabre,  and bizarre.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a famous English writer, poet, and explorer who rose to prominence under Queen Elizabeth I (1558). Raleigh was sentenced to death for treason and his body was buried at the parish church next to Westminster Abby, but his head wasn’t, and it would be many years before his head found its final resting place.

Raleigh hated Catholicism and was very vocal about it before a very Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. We can say that Raleigh was accumulating brownie points with the Queen. The Queen became enamored of Raleigh and in fact, made him one of her court favorites. The story goes that Raleigh once laid his expensive cloak over a puddle the queen was to walk over. He just couldn’t let her feet get wet. But this is just a story, which may very well be a Victorian fable.

During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh made the mistake of falling in love and secretly marrying one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Throckmorton “Bess,” who was was eleven years younger than him. Raleigh was imprisoned. It took several years for the scandal to simmer down and for Raleigh to regain favor at court. But Raleigh and Bess remained together, devoted, and had two children, Walter and Carew.

Sir Walter Raleigh & son Walter

When Elizabeth died in 1603 Raleigh was implicated in a plot to overthrow the new king, James I. Raleigh was tried for treason, & imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1616. It is during this time he writes, The Historie of the World, a book about ancient Greece and Rome. When released, he led an expedition to South America to find the lost city of El Dorado. In this expedition he attacked the Spanish settlement at San Thome, and in this battle his son Walter is killed.

As if the death of his son was not enough punishment, the Spanish Ambassador convinces James I to reinstate Raleigh’s death sentence. Raleigh is beheaded at Whitehall on October 29, 1618. Before putting his head on the block, he asked to see the ax, and looking at it said, “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases.” His devoted Bess, still grieving the death of her son, Walter, must now grieve her husband. She had his head embalmed and kept it in a red leather bag, by her side, all the time. And according to a biography written on Raleigh, “Shepherd of the Ocean,” by J. H. Adamson, & H. F. Holland, Bess was in the habit of “frequently inquiring of visitors if they would like to see Sir Walter.”

Bess died twenty-nine years later at age eighty two, and Raleigh’s head was inherited by his son, Carew, who kept it until his death. On January 1, 1668 Carew was buried with the head, alongside the body of Raleigh. It had taken fifty years for Raleigh’s head to finely rest.

sources: Wikipedia,

http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/sir-walter-raleigh.htm

Curious Events in History, Michael Powell, Sir Walter Raleigh, by Frederick Albion Ober

During the last days of the Roman Empire, a sixteen-year-old boy was abducted into slavery by some savages outside the border of the civilized world. They took him to a land far away where they put him to work under horrible conditions. The young man who had never been religious decided to pray to God for deliverance from this slavery. He prayed consistently for 5 years until at last he was able to escape. He walked 200 miles to a seaport where he found passage on a ship that took him away from this horrible place. He returned home to happy parents who begged him to stay close and never leave again.

Although happy to be home, he could not sleep. He was tormented by dreams and visions. He heard a voice that told him to return to the land of his kidnappers and preach the word of Christ to the lost in the savage land. He needed no more convincing that he had to go, and that he did. The boy lived in what is now England. His kidnappers were Celtic tribesmen from across the water..what is now Ireland. The young Briton Patricius grew into an old Irishman named Patrick, St Patrick. So the patron saint of Ireland was an Englishman by birth! Patrick is credited with driving the idol-worshipping Druid religion out of Ireland and converting almost an entire population to Christianity.

Patrick who was once a slave in the flourishing slave trade in Ireland became their liberator. One of Patrick’s accomplishments was to put an end to this horrible slave trade. The Celts would kidnap hundreds at a time. The boys were used as sheepherders and girls as sex slaves. What the young Patrick thought to be a dark time turned out to be light and liberty for so many.

Sources: Who was St. Patrick? http://www.history.com/topics/who-was-saint-patrick

The Greatest Stories Never Told, by Rick Beyer

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