Thanks to applications such as spell checker and thesaurus, I don’t have to consult a dictionary very often when I’m writing these days. I still have several of them adorning my bookshelves though — “Black’s Legal Dictionary,” a couple of medical dictionaries, Webster’s and the all-important “Oxford English Dictionary,” sit side by side and I do consult them occasionally; after all, an author who writes crime novels has to try to get his facts right.
My favorite dictionary is the Oxford. It gives me words, their meanings and histories, that I’ve never, ever dreamed of, and that warrants an article by itself, but this piece isn’t about a book, interesting as the history of that publication is. Instead, it’s about a man, an American, although there is a strong connection between the book and the man.
The man’s name was William Chester Minor, and he was the son of Eastman Strong Minor and Lucy Bailey. His parents belonged to the Congregational Church in New England, and they were working as missionaries in Ceylon — now Sri Lanka — when he was born on June 22, 1834. Minor had several siblings and his half-brother, Thomas T. Minor, later became mayor of Seattle, Washington.
When William was 14, he was sent home to the United States to go to school and to live with relatives in New Haven, Connecticut. While there he attended the New Haven Collegiate and Commercial Institute, later renamed the Russel Military Academy, where he studied to enter college and attended daily drills dressed in cadet uniform. From there he applied to Yale and was accepted at their School of Medicine. In order to support himself while he studied, he returned to Russel Military Academy to work as an instructor as well as taking on work helping to compile the projected 1864 Revision of “Webster’s Dictionary.”
William specialized in comparative anatomy while he was at Yale and finally graduated in 1863 with a medical degree. From there, he joined Knight General Hospital in New Haven, but the Civil War was raging and his experience at Russel Military Academy was calling him so, later that year, he volunteered to join the Union Army as a surgeon.
Minor was posted to the 2nd Division Hospital at Alexandria, Virginia, and it is said he saw service at the Battle of the Wilderness, a confrontation that generated numerous horrendous casualties. This may not be true because the battle was fought on May 5 to 7, 1864, and he is not recorded as reporting to the military hospital until May 17 of that year. Of course, he may still have treated wounded from the battle and he did serve through to the end of the war before being posted to Governor’s Island in New York City.
Here he was promoted to captain, but it was while he was in New York that Minor began to behave strangely. He started to have delusions and took to spending all his off-duty time in the city’s red-light district, consorting with prostitutes. His condition deteriorated until, in 1867, to curb his behavior, the army transferred him away from temptation to Fort Barrancas in the Florida Panhandle. The move did no good; he became paranoid, accusing fellow officers of conspiring against him and developing a belief that he was being pursued by an Irish secret society. Eventually, in 1868, he challenged a fellow officer to a duel, was examined by a panel of doctors and was then transferred to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. This was a mental hospital and Minor was admitted voluntarily as a patient.
Hospitalization didn’t work. After 18 months, Minor’s condition hadn’t improved and may even have gotten worse. In 1871, he was discharged from the hospital and from the army, who granted him a pension as it was thought his condition was due to his war experiences. After discharge, at the suggestion of his family, he decided to cross the Atlantic to England.
By 1872, he was living in Tenison Street in the London district of Lambeth. He was living on his US Army pension and had once again taken to consorting with prostitutes but was still convinced that he was the target of the Irish secret society and that they had followed him from America.
Matters came to a head in the early morning of Feb. 17, 1872. William Minor happened to meet George Merrett, a brewery worker who he didn’t know, on the street and shot him three times before attacking him with a Bowie knife.
A nearby policeman arrested Minor, who didn’t resist, and he was charged with murder. Several people gave evidence at the trial as to Minor’s mental state. It appeared that he believed that during the civil war he had been ordered to brand an Irish soldier on the face with the letter “D”, for deserter, and that the Irish had been pursuing him ever since. He was convinced that invisible men entered his room at night, tried to poison him and forced him to commit illicit acts.
The court was convinced, and the verdict was “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Minor was sentenced to be detained in a hospital for the insane “Until her majesty’s pleasure be known.”
The Broadmoor Institute for the Criminally Insane isn’t like a normal prison. Minor’s accommodation was quite comfortable. The US Consul sent him clothing, food and drawing materials, he had a good income from his pension and began collecting antiquarian books.
As part of his book collecting, Minor corresponded with London booksellers and through them heard about an appeal for volunteers to help contribute to the new “Oxford English Dictionary.” He had done something similar in his youth for Webster’s and so he volunteered. For the next 20 years he worked on the dictionary, sending in no less than 12,000 quotes in just two years. In the end James Murray, the compiler of the first Oxford, said of William Minor, “So enormous have been Dr. Minor’s contributions during the past 17 or 18 years, that we could easily illustrate the last four centuries from his quotations alone.”
Murray campaigned for Minor’s release but his condition had become worse and he had mutilated himself. Despite this he was released in 1910 and he was deported back to the USA. Here, he was immediately admitted to an asylum where he lived out the remaining ten years of his life.
As I said at the start of this article, I love my Oxford and, in future, when I consult it I shall think kindly about people like William Chester Minor who, despite his illness, did so much to help compile it.
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