Cohen, D. L.

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David L Cohen

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Journal of Bentham Studies

Bentham’s Frigidarium: Utilitarianism and Food Preservation

UCL Discovery

UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)1Bentham’s Frigidarium: Utilitarianismand Food PreservationDAVID L. COHENJeremy Bentham’s Frigidarium manuscripts form a little known excursion byBentham into the science of food preservation. These little discussed manuscripts arementioned by Bentham in a letter to his brother Samuel and in two letters to PeterMark Roget (1779-1869), a precocious physician who received scientific acclaim bythe age of 21 and who in October 1800 spent six weeks with Jeremy Benthamdiscussing Bentham’s scheme for the utilization of the sewage of big metropolises andhis Frigidarium (related projects).1 The manuscripts are rarely mentioned in theliterature on Bentham.2 Roget himself, referred to them only three times, the lastreference written just before Roget began his stay with Bentham.3 Samuel Romilly(1757-1818), Roget’s uncle, seems to have been aware of Bentham’s Frigidarium andrather proud that Bentham saw fit to consult his nephew about it.4 The plans werediscussed during their six week acquaintance, (although there is no record of whatthey discussed) Bentham wrote Roget that he felt ‘much the want of a confidentialfriend, whose sympathetic zeal might animate my languor’.5 After this episode,however, the manuscripts are never mentioned again. This essay will do three things.First it will provide some possible reasons why Bentham was interested inrefrigeration and why he abruptly ceased to show interest. Second, in order to answerthe first question the history of refrigeration will be outlined and the place ofBentham’s device in it will be described. Lastly, how the Frigidarium was supposedto work will be explained.1 W.W. Webb, ‘Roget, Peter Mark’, Dictionary of National Biography, xlix. 149; The Correspondenceof Jeremy Bentham, ed. J.R. Dinwiddy, vi. Oxford, 1984 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p.351 (hereafter Correspondence (CW). Roget stayed at Queen’s Square Place and attended a course oflectures by John Abernethy (1764-1831) at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.2 There exists only one mention outside the footnotes in Bentham’s correspondence, that I know of, inC.K. Ogden, ‘Bentham on Invention’, Psyche, x (1929), p. 107.3 Correspondence (CW), vi. pp. 350-1, 361-34 Although he was quite unsure what the contraption was for, and implied that Bentham was quitesecretive about it, probably because of fears about patents: Ibid., p. 224, n1.5 Correspondence (CW), vi. p. 348.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)2Most of the frigidarium manuscripts are rough outlines and sketches of ideascomposed between 1794-1809. Bentham himself describes them as ‘in a very crudeand imperfect state’.6 Little is known about the manuscripts except what is containedin them and the letters to and from Roget. It seems that Bentham envisioned a largeunderground ‘ice-house’ in which foods other than grain could be stored for longperiods of time. The basic principle would be to exclude heat, but not to freeze, asfreezing causes the texture to be ‘quite broken up and destroyed’.7 Rather, Benthamwished to keep the subject-matter in temperature of not more than 360 Fahrenheit(2.220 Celsius). The objects would be stored in airtight containers. The temperature inthe Frigidarium would be preserved by ensuring an ‘adequate magazine of icethroughout the year’ and through certain chemical reactions that he saw taking placein the pools of water in the Frigidarium storage chambers.Why the Frigidarium?In the manuscripts and in his correspondence Bentham himself gives some reasonswhy he thought the construction of the Frigidarium would be useful. Indeed, theobject of the Frigidarium was outlined rather clearly as ‘The Preservation of Animaland Vegetable Substances from all species of Spontaneous decomposition’ and the‘Regulation of natural processes depending on particular temperatures’.8 Benthamlisted under ‘Evidence in favour of the profitability/probability of success’ that inaddition to the preservation of legumes, fruit, milk products, meats and fish theFrigidarium would hasten the ripening of fruits, the brewing of Beer, the fermentationof wine, the drying of wood for musical instruments, the hatching of wood, andpreserve dead bodies for a national bank for anatomical study.9 In typical fashion,Bentham thought he created a device that would perform not one but a plethora offunctions useful to society. In his last letter to Roget on the Frigidarium Benthamoutlined its primary purpose, to preserve food from season to season, and even fromday to day in the hope that the price of the food would remain constant, since there6 Ibid.7 Ibid., p. 347.8 University College London, Bentham Mss (hereafter cited as UC) cvi. 64.9 Ibid.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)3would now be a more constant supply. Bentham seems to have envisioned theFrigidarium as part of some sort of central purchasing agency that would buy the foodwhen it was not too dear and sell it when it was wanted at a rate ‘profitable to theseller, and yet cheap to the poor’.10The Frigidarium papers were written between 1794 and 1809 during a period ofwar and food shortages throughout the continent and Britain. The panic from the grainshortage and the subsequent riots in 1795 and 1800,11 coupled with the widespreadperception that conditions of the lower classes had markedly deteriorated,12 and themarket distortions caused by the war in Europe,13 made Bentham realize the vastpotential benefits of a method of storing food for long periods of time. The greatconcentration of people in Urban centres and the massive increase in population notedby Arthur Young as far back as 1771 made the need for a method of preserving foodduring times of want and the social dangers that would accompany famine, acute.14The dangers of scarcity were well known at the time and in most were mindsconnected with violent Revolution, something to which Bentham (at that time, at least)was quite unsympathetic.15 Bentham probably thought of himself as a latter dayJoseph who would, at a profit, store food during the time of plenty for the time ofwant and thereby save the nation from starvation and keep inflation in check.16Bentham believed that in order to combat food shortage government shouldencourage the entry of capital into agriculture and seek to provide remedies for localdisadvantages of supply; the Frigidarium satisfies Bentham’s desires perfectly.17Lastly, at the same time that he was working on the Frigidarium Bentham was writinghis papers on the Panopticon and the National Charity Company. It quite easy to seehow the long-term storage of food would fit in very well with both projects’requirements of economy.10 Correspondence (CW), vi. p. 358.11 R. Wells, Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England 1763-1803, New York, 1988, 1-2; M. E.Rose, The English Poor Law 1780-1930, Newton Abbot, 1971, p. 20.12 D. Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered, London, 1795, p. 6. Seealso J.R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism, English Ideas on Poor Relief 1795-1834, London, 1969, pp.52-3.13 Ibid. 52.14 S. Thorne, A History of Food Preservation, Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, 1986, p. 17; Poynter, p. 45.15 For that connection see Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, London, 1795; Poynter,Society and Pauperism, pp. 52-3.16 He alludes to something to that effect in a letter to Samuel Bentham, Correspondence (CW), vi. p.359.17 Poynter, Society and Pauperism, p. 121.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)4Bentham’s loss of interest in the eighteen teens18 probably has to do with theturning of the tide of the war in Europe in Britain’s favour, which was accompaniedby fewer food shortages, and new developments in food preservation and cooling thatwould revolutionize the food industry. These changes would make superfluous thewell intended by very amateur forays into refrigeration of someone who confessednever to have seen an icebox and relied only on the theoretical works of chemists,19experiences recorded in travelogues, and his own experiments which remain for themost part indecipherable.A General History of Refrigeration and Food PreservationThe ancients knew very well the powers of refrigeration, the first recorded use of anice house is in a Chinese poem of 1100 BC and the snow trade is as old as theRomans. The ancient Egyptians knew that the vaporization of water caused a net heatloss. The Arabs were the first to discover that when certain salts are added to waterthe water cools.20 The cooling of water and wine by adding various salts was noted byFrancis Bacon (1561-1626). Robert Boyle (1627-1691) used salts to freeze water inhis Historia Experimentalis de Frigore (1665). Daniel Gabrieli Fahrenheit (1686-1736) established his thermometer’s zero using snow and ammonium nitrate. BlasVillafranca was the first to use the words ‘to refrigerate’ in 1550 in his MethodusRefrigerandi ex Vocato Slentiro Vinum Aquamque.21 The first true refrigerator22 wasdevised by the Scot, William Cullen (1710-1790), who was the first to observescientifically that the evaporation of ethyl ether is accompanied by a fall intemperature. In 1755 Cullen produced a laboratory set up which permitted him tomake ice by evaporation of water under a bell jar under reduced pressure.2318 Bentham maintained a constant interest in the Frigidarium through 1809, even beginningconstruction of parts of it, as well as securing a sufficient quantity of ice to maintain it: UC 106-70, pp.106-71.19 Bentham claimed to be ‘very slow and awkward’ at mathematics: Correspondence (CW), vi. p. 357.20 R. Thevenot, A History of Refrigeration Throughout the World, translated by J.C. Fiddler, Paris,1979, p. 24.21 Ibid., p. 24.22 By true refrigerator I mean a device that could create ‘cold’ as opposed to a device that would onlymaintain the ‘cold’ that was already present.23 Thevenot, History of Refrigeration, p. 28UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)5Before 1875 there were four families of refrigeration machines: those that reliedon the compression and evaporation of liquefiable gasses; those that relied on theexpansion of precompressed air; absorption machines, and those that relied on theevaporation of water at reduced pressure. The first type of refrigeration machine wasmost common in Britain, the second in America, and the third in France.24 Progress inthe science of refrigeration began to accelerate in the late eighteenth century. In 1781the Italian Tiberio Cavallo (1749-1809), who lived in England from 1771, publishedin the Transactions of the Royal Society descriptions of his experiments on thelowering of temperatures by the evaporation of several ethers and alcohol.25 ErasmusDarwin (1731-1802) observed in 1788 that the expansion of compressed air results incooling.26 Gerald Nairne (1726-1806), a Scot, in 1777 published an idea of puttingsulphuric acid under an evacuated bell jar to absorb water vapour and thus acceleratethe cooling process caused by water evaporation.27 If Bentham was unaware of Cullen,Cavallo, Darwin and Nairne’s observations, he was definitely informed of them byRoget who was in close contact with Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) and HumphryDavy (1778-1829) and was educated in medicine at Edinburgh.28 Bentham himselfseems to have scoured the scientific literature on this subject reading Lavoisier (1743-1794), Rumford (1753-1814) and Kirwain (1733-1812).29 In 1793, the year beforeBentham began to write down his ideas on refrigeration, Thomas More obtained apatent in America for cooling by ice. In 1803 More described his refrigerator, a boxcooled by an ice salt mixture.30 Finally, in 1810, the year Bentham ceased to occupyhis time with refrigeration, the Scot John Leslie (1766-1832) perfected a laboratoryapparatus that was able to procedure 3 kilograms of ice per hour of operation.31Food preservation by means other than thermal control also has a long history.The benefits of smoking, curing, pickling, and salting food were well known in themiddle ages. Much of the impetus to preserve food in the eighteenth century came24 Ibid., p. 39.25 Ibid.26 Ibid., p. 43.27 Ibid., p. 47.28 Webb, ‘Roget’, p. 149.29 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, French Chemist and bete noir of the English Chemists of this period (dueto his anti-phlogiston stance); Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count von Rumford, inventor, chemist andphilanthropist; Richard Kirwan, chemist and natural philosopher. Bentham read his Elements ofMineralogy, 1784, soon after its publication (Correspondence (CW), iii. p. 292), and made great use ofKirwan’s ideas on decomposition in his refrigeration manuscripts.30 Thevenot, History of Refrigeration, p. 416.31 Ibid., p. 47.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)6from the Navy by the persistence of scurvy. In 1752 James Lind (1716-1794)32connected scurvy with a lack of fruit and vegetables. The Navy began to actively seekmeans of preserving food. Bottling fruit became a well established practice by themid-eighteenth century.33 The Dutch at this time had discovered a way to preservefood covered with hot fat in canisters whose lid had been soldered on just after thecooking had finished.34 Bentham was aware of the Dutch advances and theirsuccessful use of preserved food in Guiana.35 In France, Nicolas Appert (1750-1841)a confectioner near Paris discovered a method of canning that preserved food formany months. In 1810 he published his L’Art de Conserver pendant plusieurs anneestoutes les Substances Animales et Vegetales which soon became an internationalsuccess.36 In England the book was published in 1811 as ‘The Art of Preserving allKinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years’. Three months afterAppert published his book in France a certain Peter Durand in London was granted apatent for the invention of a method of preserving animal and vegetable food andother perishable articles for a long time without perishing, and admitted receiving theinvention from a ‘certain foreigner living abroad’. Soon canneries were popping upeverywhere.37It would seem that Bentham was caught in the middle of a movement that wassearching for methods of food preservation. His refrigerator like More’s in Americawas an ice box whose humidity and temperature was regulated by vapours and salts.Bentham’s loss of interest in 1809 makes sense in light of the revolution in iceproduction and canning that swept Europe the following year. Why should he spendhis inexpert time on such pursuits when his idea was no longer state of the art and itseemed that it was now possible to can foods so they need not be refrigerated, and tomake true refrigerators instead of steady-state ice boxes.The Functioning of the Frigidarium and its component parts explained32 James Lind of Haslar was the cousin of John Lind (1731-81), Bentham’s close friend. SamuelBentham was in friendly contact with James Lind.33 Thorne, Food Preservation, 21-4.34 Ibid. 25.35 UC cvi 64.36 In France it went into seven editions by 1832. Appert’s forenames are not known with certainty andinclude: Nicholas, Francois, and Charles.37 Thorne, Food Preservation, pp. 28-37.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)7The Frigidarium took its name from the cooling off room in Roman Baths. It was apartly submerged bubble that was covered with earth in a kind of mound that acted asinsulation. Stairs would lead down to the two main chambers. There would be adouble air lock system, one at the beginning of the stairs down and one before entryinto the first chamber, the ante-Frigidarium. This first chamber was a cooling offroom where the objects to be stored would be slowly cooled in order to minimize theamount of ice lost. Water collected from the melted ice would be applied to the objectto be stored, the evaporation of which would cool it off even more.38 The nextchamber was the Frigidarium itself which had a viewing table and an elaboratestorage system wherein the objects were stored. There were two double glazedwindows that looked on to the display table in the Frigidarium from outside themound.39 The storage system, which worked by pulleys, enabled the object to beplaced from storage onto the table before the attendant actually entered the mound.40This was done to minimize the amount of time the attendant, a heat producer himself,would be in the Frigidarium. Behind the Frigidarium was an ice receptacle whichwould be the main cooling agent for the Frigidarium.In the Frigidarium and ante-Frigidarium chambers were pools called ‘Balneums’.These pools of water would steady the temperature by heating or cooling the air of theFrigidarium as the temperature of the air in the Frigidarium fluctuated. Bentham didnot think of the Balneums as necessary components of the Frigidarium, rather he sawthem as an added insurance against wild temperature fluctuations.41 Salts would beadded to make the water colder and placed in the open air to absorb the humidity.42The outside of the mound itself would be cooled (and thus cool the inside of themound) by the nightly evaporation of sewage from nearby cities that would be pouredonto it. The sewage would have the additional advantage of fertilizing the plants thatwould grow on the mound.43 In the manuscripts Bentham hinted that the storedobjects would be sealed in air-tight containers. This would be accomplished by38 Ibid.39 UC cvi. 68, although in UC cvi. 66 he mentions triple glazing.40 UC cvi. 66.41 UC cvi. 48.42 Ibid and UC cvi. 68.43 UC cvi. 48.UCL Bentham ProjectJournal of Bentham Studies, vol. 1 (1997)8boiling while sealing or corking in a vacuum.44 The Frigidarium was not a truerefrigerator since it did not rely on a physical or chemical process to cause theabsence of heat (i.e. create ‘cold’). Rather it was more of a device that once itscontents were cold would keep absent through insulation and chemical and physicalprocesses.ConclusionIn a time of food shortages Bentham thought it a very humanitarian if not a prudentand potentially profitable decision to investigate methods of storing foods for longperiods of time. The technology of canning and refrigeration was sufficientlydeveloped to allow Bentham to have an amateurs go at designing a public works typeice box that relied on sewage and ice to keep sealed goods from spoiling and still turna profit. A return to relative abundance and revolutions in food preservation madeBentham’s amateurish forays seem irrelevant and it is no wonder that he neverseriously returned to them.Copyright © 1997, David L. Cohen. This file may be copied on the condition that the entirecontents, including the header and this copyright notice, remain intact. It may not be used forcommerical purposes without the author’s prior consent.44 UC cvi. 68.

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