William C. Minor

William C. Minor

Dr. William Chester Minor (born June 1834 in Manepay , Ceylon , † March 26, 1920 in Hartford , Connecticut , United States ) was an important contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary . He was a military doctor by profession in the US Army , but spent most of his life in a psychiatric hospital after killing someone in a fit of mental illness.

youth

William Minor was born in the small village of Manepay on the northeast coast of Ceylon, where his parents worked as missionaries in the service of the Congregationalist Church . His mother died of tuberculosis when he was three, after which his father remarried. In Ceylon, Minor learned many native languages. At the age of 14 he was sent to live with an uncle in the United States.

US Army doctor

Minor studied medicine at Yale University , from which he graduated in 1863. The United States was in the middle of the Civil War at the time , and the young doctor applied to the Union Army , where he was admitted to the lowest rank as acting assistant surgeon . In 1864 he was used in Virginia , where he witnessed the Battle of the Wilderness in May ; the battle resulted in 27,000 deaths within two days. In a later trial, in an episode he was going through here, the cause of his mental illness was suspected: As a field doctor he had to brand a deserter of Irish descent.

However, Minor initially remained inconspicuous in his work. When most of his colleagues were demobilized after the war, his temporary contract was even converted into a permanent position with the rank of captain . It wasn't until 1866, when he was serving on Governor's Island , New York , that the first signs of paranoia began to show. Because he also regularly visited prostitutes in New York, he was transferred to Fort Barrancas, Florida , where he was noticed for his aggressive behavior. In 1868 he complained of headaches and dizziness. In September he was diagnosed as "delusional"; he is a danger to himself and others. He spent the next 18 months in a Washington, DC psychiatric hospital in 1871, and his case was finally ruled hopeless and Minor was given early retirement.

In October of the same year he took a ship to England. There he occupied himself with painting watercolors, traveled through Europe and made a living from his pension. But here, too, he suffered from his mental illness: He felt particularly persecuted by the Irish and complained of nocturnal visitors who tormented him.

The manslaughter

Minor moved into a room in the ill-reputed Lambeth Marsh , now part of London , but still part of Surrey at the time . On the morning of February 17, 1872, George Merrett, a stoker in a brewery, set off on his early shift here. He was shot from behind. The perpetrator William Minor was arrested without resistance and confessed to the act. Since he was an American and looked more like a gentleman, the press became very interested in the process that followed.

The jury passed its verdict on April 6, declaring Minor not guilty of mental illness and leaving the judge to take further action. The judge ordered preventive detention ( safe custody on). Minor was housed in the then newly opened Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane Mental Health Institution in Crowthorne , Berkshire . As a retired soldier, he received a pension of US $ 1,200 a year so that he could lead a privileged life: He moved into two connected cells that he was allowed to leave during the day. He turned one of the cells into a library with a desk. He paid a fellow patient to clean up and serve him.

The delusions increased over the years. Minor believed that little boys visited him at night, drugged him with chloroform, and committed immoral acts with him. He was convinced that they penetrated through the barricaded door or the floor. He also complained about attempts at poisoning, torture with electric current and - after the airplane was invented - also about hijackings by plane. However, he did show that he had committed manslaughter. In 1879 he contacted the widow of his victim, who visited him several times, and helped her with money.

Collaboration on the Oxford English Dictionary

Around 1880 must Minor calling to cooperate in the New Dictionary of James Murray found in one of the books he had delivered in large numbers in his cell. Murray campaigned in it to employees, the books on citations should review, in which he called particularly 200 book titles. Correspondence between Minor and Murray has only been documented since 1885, but according to Murray himself, the first contact was made in 1880 or 1881.

For Minor, the call for cooperation must have meant the opportunity to get in touch with the outside world. The mental illness hadn't affected his intelligence, he had an excellent library and plenty of time. His intelligence is shown in the methodical way he approached the task: Instead of sending in receipts straight away like the other employees, he first looked at his books and prepared word lists, which took him around three months per book. In 1884 he contacted the editorial office for the first time, asking which keywords were being worked on and sent in his receipts.

The first keyword was art , for which he provided 27 pieces of evidence. Minors evidence was characterized by the fact that he had already picked the best places; he often succeeded in documenting the first appearance of a word in the English language. He delivered over 100 receipts per week. In addition to Fitzedward Hall , who was also an American and mentally ill, Murray considered him his most important collaborator. The extent of Minor's performance is difficult to estimate because the documents in the dictionary are naturally cited anonymously, but Minor must have provided tens of thousands of documents which, because of his unique approach, were much more likely to have been published than those of other employees.

As early as Volume 1: AB, which appeared in 1888, Minor was named as a collaborator. According to a widespread account, Murray is said to have met Minor in 1897 and learned about the circumstances of his life. According to Murray's own account, however, he learned of the whereabouts of one of his most valuable employees sometime between 1887 and 1890. The two met in January 1891 and dozens of times after that. For more than 20 years, Minor worked on the dictionary that would later become famous as the Oxford English Dictionary .

Old age and death

How great the trust was placed in Minor is shown by the fact that he was allowed to have a pocket knife to cut the pages of his books. However, requests to be discharged were denied, eventually making Minor the longest-staying patient in Broadmoor. Around 1900, Minor, who had previously explicitly described himself as an atheist, found faith. In this context, he seems to have increasingly found the masturbation he practiced extensively to be sinful. On December 3, 1902, an incident occurred in which he cut off his penis as atonement.

With age, falls and colds increased; In 1910 all privileges were suddenly withdrawn from him. Friends and relatives ensured that he was transferred to the United States that same year, where he was housed at St Elizabeth's Asylum , Washington, DC. In 1918 his illness was diagnosed there as “ dementia praecox of the paranoid form”, which corresponds to schizophrenia in today's terms . In 1919 the minor, who had since gone blind, was placed in an old people's home, where he died on March 26, 1920. Minor had spent 38 years of his life in freedom and then 47 years in various institutions.

Biography

In 2019, The Professor and the Madman, a biopic about Murray, was published, which is based on the book The Surgeon of Crowthorne and in which Minor also plays an important role. Mel Gibson stars as Murray and Sean Penn plays minor.

literature

• Simon Winchester: The Surgeon of Crowthorne. A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary . Penguin, London 1999, ISBN 0-140-27128-7 .
  • US domestic market edition: The professor and the madman. a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary . HarperPerennial, New York 1998, ISBN 0-06-017596-6 .
  • German translation: The man who loved words. A true story . Knaus, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-813-50093-4 (translated by Harald Alfred Stadler).
• Paul Harvey : Pen Pals . In: Lynn Harvey (ed.): Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story" . Bantam Books, London 1997, ISBN 0-5532-5962-8 , pp. 31-33. (Reprint of the London 1984 edition).

Web links

• Example of a receipt sent by Minor