In the second half of the 19th century, the British Empire was at the height of its power. At that time, one in five people on earth was a subject of Queen Victoria, and the British flag flew majestically in every corner of the globe. British economic and military dominance was eventually followed by cultural dominance. English began to march towards its position as the world’s leading language, but it had a significant disadvantage compared to its rivals, French and German. The language of Shakespeare and Dickens lacked a serious monolingual dictionary.
In London, a group of linguists set themselves the task of compiling a comprehensive English-English dictionary that would become the cornerstone of English culture. Given the complexity of the undertaking, they asked for the public’s help.
The response has been overwhelming. English lovers from all corners of the globe started sending letters to London with all sorts of words and examples of their use in books and newspapers. Linguists carefully examined each word and assessed whether it was suitable for publication. Thus was born the magnificent dictionary we know today as the Oxford English Dictionary.
One of the most prolific external contributors to the dictionary, with thousands of quotations, he has long been an enigma to linguists in London. His letters showed him to be a man of exceptional insight and intelligence. He persistently but politely declined invitations to meetings of his most deserving colleagues. No one knew who the mysterious volunteer was who had contributed so many examples of the use of words to the dictionary “that his quotations alone could easily be used to describe the whole of world events over the past four centuries”.
The American was William C. Minor, a retired military doctor with a degree from Yale University. He declined invitations from linguists not because of shyness or false modesty, but because of “logistical difficulties”, as he put it. He had been confined to Broadmoor Hospital for Mental Diseases for murder, but he preferred not to mention this detail in his letters. He had a double life. He spent his days with a book in his hand, searching for interesting words, which he dutifully collected and sent to London. He was focused and lucid, one might say – healthy. But at night, the demons he had fought all his life inevitably crept into his cell. The plague and the haunting were his faithful night-time companions.
In Victorian England, psychiatry as we know it today did not exist. William Chester Minor was an intellectual, a murderer and a mental patient. Obsessively browsing through old books and hunting for rare words were his only therapy.
Childhood in a tropical paradise
Minor was American, but born in 1834 in Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called. His parents were Congregationalist missionaries. Eastman’s father was a successful printer and a respected man in the USA, but one day he left the comfort of his home on the American East Coast and set out to spread the word of the Lord on the other side of the world. In the jungles of Sri Lanka, the Minors lived a modest but eventful life. The mission village had a school and a small printing press, both run by Eastman. Little William was thus surrounded by books and newspapers from an early age. When he was not at school, he would run barefoot on the sandy beaches and climb coconut trees with his friends. Life in tropical Ceylon was vibrant and fun.
William was a bright and curious child. He often travelled around the island with his parents, learning about the customs of the people and their languages. At the age of 13, he already spoke Sinhala, Tamil and a little Chinese. It was also then that the first signs of the mental illness that would grip him for life began to show. In his old age, he recalled that it was in Ceylon that he had his first “obscene thoughts” when he saw half-naked local women. This should not have been unusual for a young man of his age, but William was constantly in a battle with himself because of his strict ecclesiastical upbringing. He tried with all his might to drive away the corrupt thoughts, but they kept returning and tempting him. For the rest of his days, William unsuccessfully fled the guilt and shame he had first experienced on a paradise island in the Indian Ocean.
Perhaps his parents noticed his difficulties too, sending him to the USA at the age of 14, to live with his brother Alfred in Connecticut, far away from the temptations of the tropics. The years passed without a stir and the pecking of conscience subsided. In the USA, William was solely concerned with academic challenges. He enrolled at Yale, one of the best universities in the country, and graduated in medicine at the age of twenty-nine. Soon after graduating, he joined the army. The US had been in the throes of civil war for several years, and with the Minor family hailing from New England, William joined the Union. The scenes he witnessed on the battlefield stirred up demons that had been dormant.
Seal of war
The North German army was chronically short of doctors, so the young recruit had his hands full. When he had finished with one wounded man, the next was waiting for him. The sensitive William, who in civilian life loved to paint and play the flute, struggled to maintain his mental equilibrium in an environment where death and suffering could see no end. One day, his fragile health was severely tested.
A young Irish man in a tattered uniform is brought to a Polish hospital. William was puzzled, as the young man had no visible injuries. His colleague explained to him that he was a deserter who needed to be punished. Desertion was widespread during the American Civil War. Ten per cent of all soldiers threw away their uniforms within four years. The command on both sides of the front tried to combat this with punishment and public shaming. The time came when William realised the dark side of his profession.
A battered iron bar was thrust into his hands, the end of which was twisted into the shape of the letter D. The commander ordered him to brand the frightened Irishman’s cheek with a mark that would forever testify to his shameful cowardice. Two soldiers held the unfortunate man still, while William raised the red-hot stick and stood stunned. He was only calmed by the voice of his commander. A command is a command. The flesh sizzled on contact with the iron, the Irishman staggered, and the calamity was over. But the cruel mark was not only with the young deserter, it was also with William throughout his life.
In May 1865, the North defeated the South and the divided country was united again. With enough wounded and maimed and not enough doctors, William enlisted in the army. Colleagues spoke of him in choice words. “William Minor is among the dozen best doctors in the country,” said a Yale professor. His work during the cholera epidemic that broke out at the time earned him the rank of captain. In 1867, he was transferred to New York, and instead of starting to climb the career ladder, he sank deeper and deeper into the gloom of his illness.
He became suspicious and irritable. He started carrying a gun, believing that there were bandits lurking behind every rubbish bin. He put cupboards outside the front door of his flat, convinced that the villains were after his life. At night, he would wander around the city and go into public houses. His sex drive was unquenchable and he was ashamed of it.
One day he surprised his colleagues by telling them he was engaged. Fortunately, his Manhattan prostitute of choice changed her mind just before the fateful moment. All his efforts were in vain, and the “obscene thoughts” he had been running away from finally caught up with him. His superiors noticed this and, like his parents in the past, tried to protect him from temptation. They transferred him to a remote military base in Florida.
Turn over a new leaf
But the Florida heat did not do him any good, he felt humiliated and became more and more aggressive. He complained of terrible headaches and got into arguments with guiltless colleagues. Soon after his arrival, it became clear that he was no longer fit for duty, and the US Army made a professional psychiatric assessment – Captain William Chester Minor was delusional. In 1869, the once-accomplished Ceylon doctor was forcibly retired and transferred to the Washington Hospital for the Insane. A victim of the war, or perhaps of the harsh Florida sun, he was also entitled to a very decent military pension.
He first encountered American psychiatry, which, like its English counterpart, was at best still in its infancy. Today, he would probably be diagnosed with what many modern soldiers suffer from – post-traumatic stress disorder. Given his affliction, schizophrenia could very likely be added. William Chester Minor was, for those days, simply ‘delusional’.
After a year and a half, he left the mental hospital and spent the next few months in Connecticut with his brother. He was a mental patient, but a free man with a military pension. He decided he needed a change of scenery and a new leaf in his life. For an art lover and educated man of his calibre, Europe was the best possible choice. The beauties of the Old World will surely heal his wounded soul. In the autumn of 1871, he boarded a ship for England. He took with him his books, his painting kit and his pistol.
He has chosen a very unusual place for his new home. He rented a flat in Lambeth, a working-class area of London famous for its crime, brothels and numerous brothels. His obscene thoughts apparently did not leave him alone. His military pension allowed him to continue to maintain what in Victorian England was called “an indecent lifestyle”. His illness survived the ocean voyage and took on new dimensions on the Island.
One night, he had the impression that someone was trying to break into his apartment. He forced himself to get dressed, grabbed his gun and rushed into the hallway. Seeing no one, he ran into the street. He was sure that the thief could not be far away, so he went after him. A few metres later, he saw a figure in the darkness and fired two bullets at it. George Merrett, a worker at a local brewery, was lying on the pavement, having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one had tried to break into Minor’s flat, it was just the delusions of a man who was unbalanced.
The jury that decided his fate came to the same conclusion. In April 1872, William Minor was found not guilty and committed to Broadmoor Hospital for the Insane, which became his home for the next thirty-eight years. In the solitude of his cell, he unexpectedly found a new meaning in a life that was slipping further and further out of his grasp.
Knowledge is power
The world would never have heard of William Minor had it not been for a group of extremely dedicated linguists who embarked on a historic venture in the 1870s, just outside Broadmoor. In London, the Philological Society set itself the task of compiling a monolingual, English-English dictionary that would become the main reference for all linguistic questions in the English-speaking world. It will be a grandiose book, containing everything English has to offer – from obsolete terms from medieval manuscripts to the living words you hear in London’s marketplaces. It will be a colossal and all-encompassing dictionary – a bulwark and bastion of the English language.
French has had such a dictionary since 1694, German since 1838. The language of the empire, “where the sun never sets”, could not afford to be so backward. While there have been attempts in the past to give English its own reference dictionary, there have been few success stories. When the Philological Society set to work, the dictionary compiled by Samuel Johnson in 1755 was the reference.
The dictionary was the work of one man, as Johnson did not want to ask for help from more knowledgeable colleagues. He was firmly convinced of his own lexicographical skills. Perhaps too much so, since the end result was sometimes ridiculous. For example, under the heading ‘oats’, we can read that it is ‘the grain on which horses are fed in England and the people of Scotland are fed’. Johnson’s personal stamp was strongly felt in the dictionary, and objectivity suffered as a result.
The Philological Society has tried to fill the gap in English lexicography. Its President was James Murray, an outstanding linguist and polyglot, who is credited with making the Oxford English Dictionary the most important dictionary in the English-speaking world today. He was born to poor parents in a remote Scottish village. He left school at the age of 14 because his family did not have enough money to send him to university. His life story is a good proof that curiosity is one of the most important human qualities.
For him, the world was an endless source of interesting stories and new insights. He loved to hang out with his elderly neighbours and listen to their stories, explore the Roman ruins scattered around and read every book he could get his hands on. Not a day went by that he didn’t learn something new. As befits a true Renaissance man, he also tried his hand at inventing. He made some kind of gloves out of branches and bushes, but gave up this activity after nearly drowning in the village pond.
“Knowledge is power” was his motto. At the age of 15, he already spoke French, German, Italian, Greek and, of course, Latin. Later, he learned many other languages that the average Briton had probably never even heard of. After moving to London, he came into contact with the Philological Society and met many kindred spirits among its members. The idea of a dictionary had been many years in the making, but it was Murray’s dedication that broke the deadlock. He gathered a team of experienced linguists around him and worked with them to draw up a detailed work plan.
Given the complexity of the undertaking, their predecessors had already considered the need to seek help from outside the narrow academic circle. They decided to turn to the public. They printed an appeal and sent it to bookshops and libraries all over the country. The idea was ambitious, unconventional and Britishly democratic.
Imagination as the only escape
When Murray became editor of the dictionary in 1879, William Minor had already been confined in a mental hospital for seven years. Despite being a murderer, he enjoyed a great deal of freedom at Broadmoor. The hospital authorities judged that he was not dangerous. This was certainly helped by his military pension, which was able to buy him more comforts than the other patients. He had two cells. One was a painting studio and a bedroom, and the other served as a reading room, in which he kept a huge number of books, neatly stacked from floor to ceiling. He even hired one of his roommates as a cleaner. He started playing the flute and painting again. In short, he was living more than solidly, given the circumstances.
But William Minor was still a mental patient. He was sane and calm during the day, but at night his cell was filled with terrifying screams. Sometimes he was visited by enraged Irishmen who wanted revenge on their deserter friend, other times he would see images of prostitutes he had once visited. In addition to anxiety and insomnia, he was also tormented by guilt.
He was aware that he had killed an innocent man, and this gave him no peace. He wanted to atone for his sins and one day he decided to take a bold step. He sent a long letter to the widow of his victim, asking for forgiveness and offering her financial help. Much to his surprise, she wrote him off and even offered to visit him.
The first visit passed in a tense atmosphere, but the strange encounters continued for several months. William and Eliza, as the widow was called, were not exactly friends, but they spent enough time together to grow closer. Eliza bought books for him in London and brought them to Broadmoor. As he was a voracious reader, every new book was more than a welcome gift. He knew he would never leave Broadmoor, so he sought solace in the imaginative worlds that lay within the pages of books of all kinds.
How is a dictionary born?
It was in one of them that he chanced upon a piece of paper that gave his monotonous prison life a new meaning. It was a call from the Philological Society, which was looking for outside help to compile the most important dictionary in English history. The call contained precise instructions which every external collaborator had to follow strictly. They were to take old books in hand and start reading carefully. It was necessary to find as many rare and unusual words as possible. When the reader came across such a word, he had to write it down on a piece of paper. Then they had to copy out the sentence containing the word and write down the author, the title of the book, the year of publication and the page where the word appears. Finally, the slip of paper had to be sent by post to the Philological Society’s headquarters, where Murray added the most important thing to each word – its definition.
The task was seemingly simple, and soon after the call was published, the Society started drowning in paperwork. Hundreds of letters arrived daily, but there were relatively few useful quotations. Some people, for example, wanted to impress the linguists and just made up words. Others forgot to write down the title of the book in which they had encountered the word. And some simply had too illegible a handwriting to contribute to a historical dictionary.
William Minor’s clinical precision made him stand out from the river of words that flooded the Philological Society’s headquarters. Most people chose quotations by feel and then sent them at random to London. But Minor, as an intellectual and a lover of literature, felt a special responsibility towards his work. He had everything he needed – time and a well-stocked library. When he took his first book off the shelf, he already had a specific plan in place.
He made a notebook out of several sheets of paper and wrote down all the words he found interesting in alphabetical order. If a word appeared fifteen times in the book, his notebook recorded exactly which pages it could be found on. By the time he had finished the first book, which took him several weeks, his notebook was more like a small book. Over the following years, quite a number of such notebooks accumulated. Each book thus eventually got its own catalogue of words.
In London, they were impressed by his precision and started sending him words for which they did not have enough quotations. The first word they sent him was “art”. The linguists listed sixteen different meanings for it, but they suspected there might be more. Minor was given the opportunity to test how his system worked. He picked up a catalogue and looked on which pages of his books the word “art” appeared. Then he opened the book and just copied the quotes from it. He did this with every catalogue. In the end he counted twenty-seven different meanings.
The system was simple and effective. Minor’s catalogues were a meticulously curated database that London linguists could browse remotely. This was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between a disreputable assassin and a dedicated linguist.
Meeting old strangers
When James Murray and his colleagues at the Philological Society started compiling the dictionary in 1879, he knew he had a lot of work ahead of him. The experience of his predecessors, who had failed for decades to publish even the first part of the dictionary, served as a reminder and an additional motivation. Every day, he searched among the letters he received for words that could be included in the dictionary. Most of them were inappropriate in one way or another, and he was pleased to find only a few.
Every time his colleagues brought an envelope to his desk with Dr W.C. Minor’s name on it, his eyes lit up. The mysterious Broadmoor colleague always knew how to pull the words Murray needed from his database. As a result, almost every one of his quotations ended up in the final version of the dictionary.
The Broadmoor doctor has become a legendary figure among linguists. Murray repeatedly invited him to visit the Society’s headquarters to see how a dictionary was being compiled, but Minor persistently declined. Usually, external collaborators were happy to accept such invitations, as they liked the feeling of being part of a team that was creating something historic. So Murray wondered who this strange Broadmoor educated man was and what his story was. All he knew about him was that W.C. Minor was the most reliable and prolific freelancer he had ever had. It was only after ten years that he found out the whole truth.
Murray’s enthusiasm has not waned during this time and after initial difficulties, his hard work has finally borne fruit. In 1884, the first volume of what was then called the New English Dictionary was published by Oxford. It was written by some of the best linguists in the country and English enthusiasts from all over the world. The epic scale of the project is best demonstrated by the fact that in five years they managed to work on just the words from ‘A’ to ‘Ant’. At first glance, it would seem that the latest edition of the dictionary could only be read by Murray’s great-great-grandchildren, but thankfully this was not the case. It was only the first and most difficult step on the road to ultimate success. Murray was delighted when it was published and predicted that the final volume of the dictionary would be published in eleven years’ time. He was thirty-three years too late.
Meanwhile, Minor continued to collect words and update his catalogues. Murray invited him to attend a gala dinner to celebrate the publication of the third part of the dictionary, which triumphed over all words beginning with the letter “C”. Queen Victoria herself, who apparently recognised the importance of the feat, “graciously allowed” the third part of the dictionary to be dedicated to her. Minor declined the invitation, as he always had, but as chance would have it, after ten years he was to meet the man with whom he had worked remotely all this time.
One day, an American linguist visited Murray’s office and, in the course of a conversation, mentioned that he admired his relationship with “poor Dr Minor”. Poor? After all, he is one of the Dictionary’s most loyal and zealous external contributors. An American colleague who knew Minor’s story told Murray that the “poor” doctor had killed an innocent man twenty years ago and had been in a mental hospital ever since. Murray was understandably shocked, but his curiosity did not let him rest. He wrote to Minor and suggested they meet. This time not in London, but in his own backyard. Surprisingly, the doctor agreed and Murray took the train to Broadmoor.
It was a cold January morning in 1891. The scene when the linguist and the killer first came face to face must have been quite unusual. Both were tall, bald and gaunt. Their bushy moustaches and luxuriant grey beards, which reached down to their navels, made them look wise and dignified. An outside observer might have thought they were twin brothers. After initial embarrassment and shy glances, a conversation developed in the cell between the bookshelves, which lasted for several hours. About words, of course. After ten years of correspondence, they knew nothing about each other. Their only common point was their love of words. Behind the bars of Broadmoor Mental Hospital, a friendship was born that day between two old strangers that would last for the rest of their lives.
A battle lost in advance
“I spent a good part of the day in Dr Minor’s cell and, as far as I could tell, he seemed no less well than I was,” recalled Murray, who became a regular visitor to the mental hospital in the following years. Together, they read linguistic journals and, while walking in the park, discussed the origins of the words that the dictionary was at that moment discussing. They spent hours in their cell, discussing English dialects over tea.
Their cooperation has not changed. Minor was still going through his catalogues and sending quotes to London. The Philological Society was a well-oiled machine under Murray’s leadership, and the dictionary was enriched with a new word every day. Since he met the mad doctor from Broadmoor, he never failed to mention his merits to his colleagues. In one edition of the dictionary, he even paid him a modest tribute.
Murry’s company was a good influence on Minor, but when the guard locked the door to his cell, it was business as usual. The disease was still alive. It left him alone when he sat in his reading room and worked, but at night it returned again and again. Murray too soon realised that he was dealing with a mentally ill man. It was impossible to ignore the aluminium foil that Minor had taped over the floor of his cell, fearing that bandits might creep in through the wooden cracks. In front of each door, he placed a bucket of water to ward off evil spirits that wanted to take possession of it. Murray did not shun him for this and never took pity on him. Besides his illness, he saw in him a sense of humour and a sincere love of language.
Minor’s illness progressed over the years, and the moments when he was calm and in good spirits became rarer and rarer. The staff listened to his daily complaints about strangers picking on his life and destroying his precious books. The management of the mental hospital changed and Minor was deprived of some of the privileges he had taken for granted. He was forbidden to play the flute and restricted to walking in the park.
When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Broadmoor Minor had been closed for almost 30 years. He was approaching seventy and wished to die in freedom. He was becoming increasingly despondent and irritable. The mental hospital administration, however, had no sympathy for his wishes and Minor resigned himself to Broadmoor being his last home.
Every meeting with Murray has had a positive effect on him. His friend was aware of this and visited him regularly. During the few hours they spent between the bookshelves, the “delusional” doctor seemed to be in good spirits and sober. But the old Dr Minor was no more, the disease had won.
Last cut
One morning at the end of December 1892, a cry came from Minor’s cell: ‘Call a doctor at once! I’ve hurt myself!” The guard on duty ran down the corridor and froze in front of the cell door. He saw Minor naked and holding a bloody knife. A rope was hanging from his crotch. Minor had decided that morning to get rid of the source of his problems. He cut off his penis. He would never again be a slave to “obscene thoughts”.
The shocked guard was present enough to immediately inform his superiors and escort Minor to the sick ward. There they found that the mad doctor had not forgotten everything he had learned at Yale. Such a procedure, performed by an unskilled man, would have meant certain death. But Minor approached the matter with his characteristic precision. First, he thoroughly sharpened the knife, which was otherwise only useful for opening letters. Then he wrapped the root of his penis with a string and tightened it firmly, and in one fell swoop cut off the organ where his “obscene thoughts” were born.
The wound healed sufficiently within a month for him to be discharged from the hospital ward, but his strength was failing. He fell out of bed more and more often and had difficulty walking. His old friend, who had since been given the title of ‘sir’, still visited him. His heart broke at the sight of the helpless Minor, and he tried his best to finally be set free, but the British bureaucratic mills were grinding slowly.
Despite his senile and fragile health, there was still a sparkle deep inside Minor. When he learned by chance that Murray was going to a conference in South Africa, he wrote him a heartfelt letter and enclosed some money in an envelope. “Building a house and travelling are similar in that they often end up costing more than we anticipated. I am sure you will find my modest contribution useful,” he wrote.
Sir Murray contacted Minor’s brother Alfred and together they managed to persuade the authorities to discharge the betrothed doctor from the mental hospital. On 6 April 1910, Winston Churchill, then British Home Secretary, signed the order for his release. William Chester Minor was no longer a concern for Great Britain. After thirty-eight years, he was allowed to return home. Before boarding the ship for America, he met his friend one last time. The farewell was in the British spirit – restrained and brief. A handshake and a “Good-bye”.
This time William Minor had six new thick books in his suitcase, all with New English Dictionary written on them. The dictionary he had used for twenty years to fight his demons was halfway there. Sir James Murray had not lived to see the last edition of his life’s project. He died in 1915 while struggling with words beginning with the letter ‘S’. William Minor, on the other hand, spent his last years as he had spent most of his life – between the four walls of a hospital for the mentally ill. He moved from Broadmoor to St Elizabeth’s Army Psychiatric Hospital in Washington. He died in Connecticut in 1920.
