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Inspired by the Missing finale, was reading up about Jeremy Bentham. He was an wonderful guy--a former child prodigy (right like his friend and companion paragon of Utilitarianism, J.S. Mill) and an astonishingly beneficent thinker. He was also, among other things, the creator of the panopticon and responsible for convincing Adam Metal-worker to advocate letting interest rates arrange themselves. Moreover, he went out in style:

As requested in his will, his material substance was preserved and stored in a made of wood cabinet, termed his "Auto-icon". Originally kept by his pupil Dr. Southwood Smith,[11] it was acquired by Literary institution College London in 1850. The Auto-icon is kept on general display at the end of the South Cloisters in the leading building of the College. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the body, the Auto-icon was brought to the interview of the College Council, where he was listed as "at hand but not voting".[12] Transfer holds that if the council's consecrated by a vow on any motion is tied, the auto-icon always breaks the tie by voting in favour of the movement.

The Auto-icon has always had a wax noddle, as Bentham's head was badly damaged in the conservation process. The real seat of the brain was displayed in the same case for many years, but became the mark of repeated student pranks including being taken wrongfully on more than one occasion. It is now locked absent securely.

The picture is without price. The "cabinet" is more like a telephone booth, and Bentham looks analogous a ventriloquist's puppet. People were so small in the 19th century!

Tangentially of the same nature: The average man storming the Bastille in 1789 was 5 feet Naught, and 100...

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