Samuel Bentham’s Panopticon
Journal: Journal of Bentham Studies
Year: 2012

Credit for devising the Panoptical ‘inspection principle’ for prison design is attributed, perhaps now irrevocably, to Jeremy Bentham. However Jeremy always insisted that the original conception came from his younger brother Samuel – ‘After all, I have been obliged to go a-begging to my brother, and borrow an idea of his’. 1 Samuel was to have been an equal partner in the running of Jeremy’s Panopticon penitentiary. What is more, while Jeremy failed to get the penitentiary built in England despi