Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and reformer, was born in Houndsditch, London, on February 15, 1748. His father was a solicitor, with wealthy and important clients in the City of London. Of his siblings, only one younger brother, Samuel (1757–1831), survived into adulthood, becoming a prominent naval architect and engineer. His mother died on January 6, 1759. In 1760 his father entered him, at the age of twelve, into the University of Oxford, where he attended the lectures of William Blackstone (later published as Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765–1769). He graduated in 1764, having been obliged to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, the statement of its dogma and discipline.

Having entered Lincoln's Inn in 1763, he was admitted to the bar in 1769. He did not, as his father wished, practice law, but decided instead to devote himself to its reform. Bentham thought of himself as "the Newton...