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Rethinking Institutions in Late Georgian England*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2009
Extract
It is a great privilege to have been invited to speak on this occasion. I shall not talk about Janet Semple's life, since I did not know Janet Semple well. I first came across her work when the Oxford University Press sent me a copy of her Ph.D. thesis, asking for my opinion as to its publishability. I groaned—yet another study of the panopticon! I opened it, started reading—and read it straight through. It was so clear, insightful, powerful in its interpretation and beautifully written. I am delighted to see that it has appeared as Bentham's Prison. I was, at a later stage, equally pleased to be involved in persuading Janet to publish some of her research on Bentham's medical and health interests. I shall not try to evaluate her work today. I think I might best honour her by trying to reflect upon some of the wider issues that surround Bentham's concerns with prisons and hospitals—issues raised by her work.
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Footnotes
*
The Janet Semple Memorial Lecture delivered at University College London on 26 November 1993. This lecture is printed as delivered. Since it was intended as a general discussion of issues rather than a thorough, scholarly survey, I have annotated the paper very lightly, doing little more than identifying works and authors mentioned therein.
References
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