ABSTRACT
When I came to University College in 1954 I met Jeremy Bentham and at this Foundation in 1955 I met Joseph Crabtree. It is no exaggeration to say that I have lived with those two great men ever since. So much in common, so few known links between them! When Crabtree was born in 1754, Bentham was only six, at the turn of the century Bentham was 52 and Crabtree (hanging grimly on) was, at 46 still only six years younger. This remarkable parallelism in their ages persisted until Bentham’s relatively early death in 1832 at the age of 84. In a brief six years Crabtree caught up at last to achieve the same age in 1838. For 78 years between 1754 and 1832 they were alive together. Both went to Oxford. Both went to France. Both escaped marriage several times under dramatic circumstancesBentham once by jumping out of a window. Both became the friends and confidantes of the educational reformers and scientists of the early 19th century. My first clue to any link between them was given at this foundation, when Geoffrey Tillotson in 1956 delivered a recruiting speech for The Lamb Society and later invited me to it.
