The Norfolk Island penal station, the panopticon, and Alexander Maconochie and Jeremy Bentham's theories of punishment

Alexander Maconochie (1787–1860), the originator of the “Mark System”, is a major figure in the history of penal discipline and is best known for his attempt to implement it at the Norfolk Island penal station from 1840 to 1844. Among Maconochie’s many works is the eight-page “Comparison Between Mr. Bentham’s Views on Punishment, and Those Advocated in Connexion with the Mark System”, in which Maconochie rejected Bentham’s critique of transportation, as well as fundamental elements of his theory of punishment. Maconochie concluded that mainstream thinking on penal discipline was dominated by “mistakes” that either “in great measure originat[ed] with Mr. Bentham”, or had been “at least sanctioned by his high authority”. This paper questions whether Maconochie’s rejection of Bentham’s views is entirely convincing, since his penal practices, as well as an earlier and lesser-cited work, indicate that Maconochie was, at times, considerably closer to Bentham’s position on punishment than “Comparison” suggests. Section I will provide some brief biographical background. Section II will explore Maconochie’s attempt to implement his reformative system at Norfolk Island, at the heart of which was surveillance and extensive record-keeping to monitor individual behaviour and progress, and in which there are echoes of Bentham’s panopticon scheme. Section III will examine Maconochie’s changing views on criminal transportation, from his adherence to the Benthamite anti-transportation line in 1818, to his qualified support for transportation from 1838 onwards. Finally, Section IV will examine the Mark System and Maconochie’s criticism of Bentham in more detail

Crowdsourcing Bentham: beyond the traditional boundaries of academic history

Transcribe Bentham is an award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription initiative that intends to engage students, researchers, and the general public with the thought and life of the philosopher and reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), by making available digital images of his manuscripts for anyone, anywhere in the world, to transcribe. In the two years since its launch in September 2010, over two million words of crowdsourced transcription have been produced by volunteers. This paper will examine Transcribe Bentham’s contribution to humanities research and the burgeoning field of digital humanities, within the context of crowdsourcing. It will then discuss the potential for the project’s volunteers to make significant new discoveries among the vast Bentham Papers collection, and examine several examples of interesting material transcribed by volunteers thus far. We demonstrate here that a crowd-sourced initiative such as Transcribe Bentham can open up activities that were traditionally viewed as academic endeavours to a wider audience interested in history, whilst uncovering new, important historical primary source material. In addition, we see this as a switch in focus for those involved in digital humanities, highlighting the possibilities in using online and social media technologies for user engagement and participation in cultural heritage

The Memorandoms of James Martin

** The revised version of this publication is available here: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1558725/. ** Presented here, for the first time, is an annotated edition of the Memorandoms of James Martin, the only extant first-hand account of perhaps the most famous escape by convicts transported to Australia. The bare facts of this episode are these: on the night of 28 March 1791, Martin, in company with fellow prisoners William Bryant, his wife Mary Bryant (née Broad) and their two children Charlotte and Emanuel, William Allen, Samuel Bird alias John Simms, Samuel Broom alias John Butcher, James Cox alias Rolt, Nathaniel Lillie, and William Morton, stole the governor’s six-oared cutter. In it, the party sailed out of Port Jackson, up and along the eastern and northern coasts of the Australian continent, crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria, and landed at Kupang, in West Timor, on 5 June. There they successfully (for a while, at least) posed as the survivors of a shipwreck, and enjoyed the hospitality of their Dutch hosts. Theirs was an incredible feat of endurance and seamanship, in surviving a two-month journey of over five thousand kilometres in an open boat. The manuscripts comprising the Memorandoms are contained within University College London’s vast Jeremy Bentham Papers collection, which runs to some 60,000 manuscript folios. The edition contains an introduction by Dr Tim Causer, which provides information about the manuscripts, Bentham’s interest in convict Australia and his acquisition of the Memorandoms, context and background to the narrative, and a summary of previous works dealing with the escape. This is followed by annotated versions of Martin’s narrative, which are linked to digital versions of the original manuscripts, allowing readers to fully explore this fascinating primary source