November 8, 2018 • 43 mins
With 600,000 words and 3 million quotations, the Oxford English Dictionary is a massive tome. Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but the first edition wasn't published until 1884. Compiling the dictionary was a Herculean task, and James Murray, the editor of the dictionary, put out a call for assistance. This early crowdsourcing strategy worked surprisingly well. Murray was particularly impressed by his most prolific and consistent contributor, an enigmatic fellow named Dr. W.C. Minor. So impressed, in fact, that Murray decided he had to meet the man in person. It's safe to say the meeting didn't go as expected.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
We're here, we're live while we're recording this live. Welcome
to the show Ridiculous Historians. My name is Ben. We are,
of course, joined with our super producer, Casey pegram my
trustee co host Noel is off on some lovely adventures
on the other side of the country, but we'll return
very soon. Speaking of returning, we are incredibly fortunate today
(00:47):
to have our returning guest host joining us, Christopher Haciotis.
Thanks for coming, man, Thanks for having me, Ben, Thanks
for having me, Casey. No wherever you are, whenever you are,
however you are, thank you. Yes, oh man, I can't
wait until I hope we can reveal some of the
cool stuff that Nola is working on. But I what
(01:08):
I really wish were happening right now is that we
would talk about Noel not being here and then anyone
listening to this podcast would just slowly turn around and
he's standing right behind them. Oh that's great. No, that's
that's my dream. It's my dream. But it was also
it was Halloween recently, so maybe I'm still in that mindset.
I'm definitely still in that mindset. Oh man. It's the
(01:30):
most wonderful time of the year. I love Halloween. What hey,
what did you do for Halloween? Dressed up as a
woodland creature? I was kind of Wolfe took the family
around the neighborhood and did not accept any candy because
we've got a little baby who's not old enough for
candy yet. And I would feel like a real bomb
taking candy from taking candy for a baby who couldn't
(01:52):
eat it under the pretenses that it's served really for
me and I grown man, I can afford my own candy. There,
there you go. That's that speaks high really. Uh, that
speaks to your character in a in a very complimentary way.
Your candy ethics are on point. I think that's something
to be proud of. Thank you. I would have done
the opposite. You would have just a baby around. Yes, yeah,
(02:15):
I did think like maybe it would be fun to
push a stroll around the neighborhood, but with no baby
in there and just be the person with an empty stroller.
Oh that's weird. That's weird, Christopher. But uh, it's not
Halloween anymore, right, we should divest these spooky thoughts from ourshole.
I'm always so reluctant to give up the ghost Halloween.
(02:36):
But you're right, things move on progress. That's the name
of the game for the human species, hopefully in the theory.
And today's episode is something that I thought would be
fascinating for anybody who's a fan of words and one
who's a fan of writing. Today's episode is about the
(02:58):
strange origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, this is
something that you and I in particular, have have used
pretty frequently over the years. I have, Yeah, dictionaries of
many kinds, I think coming super handy. Um, whether you're
a professional writer, whether you're an amateur writer, whether you
don't really care about writing at all, but you want
to know what a word means, you can look it
(03:19):
up in the dictionary. It's a great thing. Yeah, And
it's funny that you mentioned this because Noel and I
will often have conversations where we one of us is
on a rant about something and then we decide to
use a word because it sounds particularly enticing, you know,
(03:40):
only too later, usually when it's just the two of
us hanging out, only for us to later go okay,
one of us needs to look that up and make
sure it means what we think it means. We're using
the right meaning where you were saying it properly. I mean,
that's what the dictionary is for. But also that's what
Facebook is for, too, right, and social media. I've think
(04:00):
anyone who is anyone in the podcast world is very
familiar with mispronounced words. Uh there's a lot of words
out there, and you might accidentally say something a little incorrectly.
But we rely on people like Ridiculous Historians the Facebook
group associated with this fine podcast to point out in
a constructive and critical manner, any foible, any misstep, any
(04:23):
misuse of award. Oh man, you really put us on
the tight rope here. Man. All right, well, let's let's
give it a go. The Oxford English Dictionary has been
around for a long time, but perhaps not as long
as many of us would assume. The work on the
(04:45):
dictionary began. I guess in a larger historical context is
fairly recent. It began in eighteen fifty seven. Yeah, well
that's when there was a call put out for a
collection of words, a definition of words banning the twelfth
century to the present day. At the time. Um work
(05:06):
actually didn't get underway though, until the late eighteen seventies.
Eighteen seventy nine, I believe. And it took five years
for the first volume of the O E. D As
the kids on the street call it to be published
right right, And here we introduce our first character for
this story, a fellow named Professor James Murray. It was
(05:27):
a challenging assignment for Murray, who was the editor of
this of this dictionary. The way the process worked was
relatively simple. People would send in entries for words, and
the Oxford English Dictionary functions as what's called an historical dictionary,
meaning it will talk about the development of a word
(05:50):
rather than just its present day usage. So you'll see
a little bit of etymology in the dictionary, will see
a lot of etymology. I mean the thing. The thing
about the Oxford English Dictionary is it's it doesn't us
give you the definition of the word, right, it goes
into the history of the word. We said, the first
volume of the dictionary wasn't published until four I mean,
this was a lifelong pursuit from Murray and his team.
(06:11):
The final volume of the dictionary wasn't published until that's crazy, Yeah,
that's that's insane. And and it took a lot of blood,
sweat and tears because we have to remember it was
much more difficult to aggregate information back then, you know
what I mean. These people had to literally write this
stuff out, usually by hand, and send it be a post. Yeah,
(06:34):
a majority of us in the modern world, and I
would assume most of us listening to this podcast, we
live in a wealth of information. We have so many
things available to us, We have so much knowledge available
to us. But I think it's really, really, really easy
to take that for granted, right, Like you just look
something up. But for you to look something up, another
(06:55):
human being had to have put that thing in a
place for it to be searchable in the first place. So,
I mean, imagine the task of speaking a language and thinking,
you know what, all these words we just said in
the past twenty seconds, I just used forty of them,
Let's catalog them, let's itemize them, let's label them. I mean,
(07:16):
this is it's a it's a crazy undertaking, it's wild.
You have to define what a language is, what is
inside the language, what's outside the language. You have to
talk to linguistics, you have to talk to anthropologists, you
have to talk to authors and books and what's gobbledegook? Right,
which is that in the dictionary. I don't know. I
(07:37):
believe the actually so that I think that's a very
good way to paint the picture here. Professor James Murray
knew this was going to be a huge, laborious, herculean effort. However,
he underestimated the enormity of the task. When they first read,
(08:00):
too edit this new English dictionary, they thought, this is
going to take a decade, and this will probably be gosh,
I don't know, guys, around seven thousand pages long, uh,
in four volumes. Let's call it four volumes. But they
ended up with something much much larger. By the time
the final results are published in it's twelve volumes long.
(08:21):
It is comprised of four hundred and fourteen thousand, eight
hundred twenty five words defined, and it has almost two
million citations employed to illustrate what they mean. As Murray
is working on this, he builds a corrugated iron shed
that he decides to call the Scriptorium. And the scriptorium
(08:43):
houses him and his small team of assistance, as well
as this deluge of slips of paper that have been
mailed to them that are each you know, an entry
in the dictionary. Yeah, and and this is all taking
place in the UK. So this is just one country,
you know, right, this is this isn't even trying to
get the breadth of global knowledge. I do really like
(09:04):
the name Scriptorium. I imagine Murray having a rough day
at home, maybe the kids are being kind of a pain,
and he storms out of his house, slams the door, said,
I'm going to the Scriptorium. I can't handle this. To
the scriptorium, to the Scriptorium. I am just gonna start
saying that I am going to find something in our office.
I'm gonna label it the scriptorium. It won't be this
(09:24):
studio that's two on the nose, but I'm looking for
a scriptorius. Next time you shout I'm off to the scriptorium.
I'm really excited to see all of our co workers
look around the musedly and confusedly and befuddledly and uh,
but you and I will share something there we go.
I'll know what you're doing, and you for listening. In casey,
are you in on this? I'm totally in Casey on
the case, ladies and gentlemen. So as as people are
(09:49):
responding to this call, this this crowdsourcing of dictionary entries.
Professor Murray begins to notice that there's one shy meaning
star out of all of his correspondence, the most prolific,
the most consistent correspondent, the man who was sent in
more than ten thousand entries to this developing dictionary, a
(10:13):
guy named doctor William C. Minor. All that Murray knows
about Minor is that he is a doctor who was
a surgeon. He lives in Crowthorne, in the English countryside
in Berkshire, and Murray reasonably assumes that Minor must be
quote a practicing medical men of literary taste with a
(10:36):
good deal of lesio. I like, yeah, sounds like the
kind of guy who would send in, uh sending entries
to the dictionary the Dictionary Project. Did they call it
the Dictionary Project at the time? I think they did.
I mean, dictionaries existed before the O. E. D. So
I think the word probably was out there. And here's
(10:56):
here's where we introduce our second character, doctor William Chester Minor,
an American. Yeah, so you've got this American guy who's
uh contributing to one of the pillars of the English language.
What do we know about Dr Minor? Well, we know
(11:17):
that as you said he does reside in the UK.
He was an American, not only an American, but a surgeon.
Not only a surgeon, but a veteran, a veteran he
but he he also had sort of a global background, right,
so he existed in a world where many languages were
available to him. His parents were from New England. They
(11:38):
were missionaries, and Minor was actually born in Ceylon, which
today is known as Sri Lanka. So he grew up
in um the son of the son of Americans in
a former British colony. A lot of languages are kind
of swirling around him. He's in that milieu. Uh. He
comes back to the U S and he ends up
fighting in the Civil War. Mm hmmm. He's fighting, but
(12:02):
he's working as a surgeon, right, so he's he's a
medical doctor. He's in the Civil War. He experiences some
horrific things, as many people did. But um, it seems
to have really taken a toll on Dr Minor, on
his mental health, on his well being. Really rough stuff.
I mean, he was in situations where he saw sort
(12:25):
of incendiary attacks. He witnessed other soldiers burning to death. Yeah,
this is terrible, um ben I don't know if you
know about this, but what Dr Minor was ordered to
do to a certain deserter, right, yeah, it's it's a
terrible story. So he served, as you said, in various
(12:46):
incredibly bloody conflicts, including the Battle of the Wilderness in
eighteen sixty four, which was a blood bath. The particular
story we're talking about now concerns an Irish soldier in
the Union Army. Minor was told to punish the soldier
carry out his punishment by branding him on the face
(13:09):
with a hot iron with a capital D for deserter. Yeah.
So this was was an Irish citizen who was fighting
for the cause of the Union but decided he was
done with the battle, wanted to leave, wanted to leave
the army was I assume captured putting the brig and
uh and Minor was ordered to brand this guy against
his wishes, against the wishes of both of them, I think,
(13:30):
and this haunts him, This affects him for the rest
of his life. At the end of the American Civil War,
he is still serving. He's in New York City for
a time. He spends a lot of his time living
(13:51):
in the c d underbelly of New York. If he's
not working, he's off in the red light district, cavorting,
having a having some frolic time, right, I mean, it's
it's it's not uncommon for soldiers who come home from
war to have a really rough time, to look for
solace in places they might not otherwise have in the past,
(14:12):
to have a hard time keeping things together, too, undertake
risky activity too, I mean, even to see things that
aren't there, to imagine a reality that doesn't line up
with the reality experience by the majority of us. Absolutely,
and by eighteen sixty seven, the Army is completely done
(14:33):
with his behavior. They find that it is unethical and
a moral so they transfer him to a remote post
in Florida. And we're gonna, let's let's pause right there,
because Professor Murray doesn't know any of this. He doesn't
know anything about miners past. He only knows that the
guy has medical knowledge, seems to be living in either
(14:56):
retirement or he's relatively well off. And the guy has
a lot of time on his hands, and he loves words. Yeah,
so that's a that's a little background about Minor and
and and Minor is sending in these entries to the
Oxford English Dictionary Project to Professor Murray, and they seem
to be really great entries. They're really detailed, they're really varied,
they are voluminous, they are deeply researched. What Professor Murray
(15:22):
did not know was that his most faithful correspondent and
contributor was writing to him from a lunatic asylum where
he was confined for committing homicide. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's
the that's the strangest part of it, And it sounds
(15:42):
like something you could maybe have a weird, nervous laugh about,
but the story itself is quite tragic. It turns out
that Dr Minor was not in full possession of his faculties. Yeah,
and at this point he had moved to London, right right, Okay,
So he was diagnosed in eighteen sixty eight as delusional
(16:04):
and he was considered a suicide and homicide risk. So
with his consent, he was admitted to the Government Hospital
for the Insane and washing d C and officially retired
from the U. S. Army. In eighteen seventy one, he
was released and he visited his family and friends and
then boardered his ship to London, hoping that a change
of scenery would quote cure him, but his paranoia followed
(16:29):
him across the Atlanta And that's that's a not uncommon
treatment at the time. I mean, we're back in the
days before modern psychology, certainly before modern psychiatric drugs and
any sort of treatment talk, therapy, any sort of rehabilitation
like that. I mean, there's just a lunatic asylum or
a change of scenery. You know, maybe maybe something different
(16:52):
will be nice for him. Maybe being in the United
States is reminding him of the horrors he witnessed. Maybe
he's too close to the brothels. Let's just let's send
him to England. Yeah, and his family had the means
to support this travel because it was an opportunity that
many people at the time could not have reasonably pursued.
(17:15):
But the problem was that his untreated mental condition began
to worsen. He was having delusions, he was having crazy
mood swings, and he was sinking deeper and deeper into paranoia.
Particularly as his condition escalated, he would become more and
more fixated on paranoid thoughts about people with Irish nationality
(17:38):
due to that horrible story you mentioned earlier, when he
had to brand the guy in the face. He settles
originally in place called Lambeth. Yeah, and Lambeth Street is
it's in London. Um, it's kind of a seedy neighborhood. Um.
And this I think is the point when we should
introduce the next character in this tale, this tragedy. Um.
If we want to call it a tragedy, we're not
the only ones, because this is what ends up being
(18:01):
called at the time, the Lambeth Tragedy. George Merritt is
the next entry into this tale. George Merritt is a
working man. He takes a walk every day to the
Red Lion Brewery in London. And one day he's taking
a walk and he encounters Dr Miner, and Dr Miner,
who is in the grips of a mental episode, feels
(18:25):
threatened right by George Merritt, believes that Merritt has broken
into his room at some point and shoots and kills George. Yeah.
And this is this is where I you know, I
tried to find some newspaper reports in the time, and
it's really unclear to me, and I think this is
just the case in in reporting at the time, But
(18:46):
I don't know exactly whether Merritt was trying to enter
a door near where Minor was living, or if this
this happened near the brewery or well, so the records
show that Merritt was shot in the back as he
was walking away from Minor. Right, so, Minor perhaps was
(19:09):
in his home experiencing one of these delusions and just
burst out onto the street and thought that the first
person he saw was the imagined culprit m. And of
course the authority has become involved. There is a trial,
and during the trial the full extent of miners insanity
becomes revealed for the first time in public, and that's
(19:33):
that's part of what propels the Lambeth tragedy to the
stage of international news. Miner is eventually judged not guilty
on grounds of insanity, and he is sent to be
detained in England's newest asylum, but they don't ever say
how long he's going to be there. I think this
(19:55):
is the sort of thing where, you know, on on
the one hand, you can see this as a um
un enlightened treatment. You know, he's not just put to
death from murder. You know, it seems like they're doing
the nice thing. They're sending him off to a place
where he can be away from people he might harm.
But there's an understanding that there's something um not chemically
(20:15):
operating in the mind. It's maybe not entirely his fault, right,
So he sent to broad Moore, which is a place
for the criminally insane. That sounds like a nice thing,
but the conditions weren't amazing. And people at the time,
you know, it's not like they were called patients. They
weren't treated as um folks with a medical issue. These
the people at broad Moore were referred to as criminals
(20:39):
or as lunatics. Basically, you're looking at a situation where
you're putting a room, the door is locked, and there's
not a lot of treatment. You're just removed from society.
Minor did have his own cell, and Minor actually had
a second cell, right, so he had two adjoining cells,
the second of which was used for his significant, currently
(21:00):
voluminous collection of antiquarian books. That's right. He was living
the high life, well compared to other inmates or other patients.
But the didn't call the patients. They call him lunatics
and criminals, right, So he had this extensive collection of books.
He was a very it's a very well read person,
(21:23):
and the American Vice Consul General directly intervened to allow
Dr Minor to have these amenities. Right, although he's in
England and he had committed his crime there, he's still
a U. S. Citizen and um a veteran of the
Union Army, so there's some consideration being given. And he
(21:43):
has correspondence as well. The the entire time, he has
relationships with book dealers, booksellers in Oxford in particular, and
it is through this association that he hears about the
open call for submissions to what will become the Oxford
English Dictionary. And so a lot of this has lost
(22:06):
to history, but we can reasonably imagine what Dr Miner's
reaction was. It's not like he's gonna go travel anywhere.
It's not like he is living a super stressful life
full of deadlines. As recounted in a fantastic book called
The Professor and the Madman, a Tale of Murder, Insanity
(22:27):
and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester,
and I came out in Yes, that is correct. As
recounted in this book, Minor saw this as somewhat of
an escape, you know what I mean? It's a way,
it's a way to his body, maybe in these four walls,
but it's a way for him to send his thoughts
(22:48):
and his influence beyond his cell. Absolutely, and it's a
necessary escape, right. But he knew regard list of his
stability at the time. He knew that his submissions might
run the chance of being rejected. Essentially, he might not
(23:09):
be able to play the game if you revealed too
much about himself. So he always signed his letters the
same way Broadmoor, crowth Or in Berkshire. And that means
his identity remained enigmatic to everybody who's working on the
dictionary for years and years and years. Murray and Minor
never meet no And and at this point he kind
(23:30):
of builds up his own reputation, not based on who
he is, not based on the letters after his name.
If he's a you know, you don't have this weight
of authority from your job, from your name, from your class.
This authority that he gains with the O E. ED
Project is based solely on his work and through these submissions,
(23:54):
I mean they prove invaluable because he's got this collection
of antiquarian books, books that are out of print, books
that are ancient books that are are not widely used.
So he's coming through these books. He comes up with
this massive index of thousands of words. He defines them,
he provides their use in a sentence, which you know,
it sounds like a spelling be kind of thing, right,
(24:15):
But that's how you know what a word is. And
the way you define a word is to see how
it's used. And if you want to look at a
word that you don't know or that other people don't know,
you have to show how it has been used in
the past. And that's where his collection of books comes
in super handy. Yeah, and eventually you'll you'll hear a
(24:35):
couple of different counts of this. But eventually Murray decides
that he has to meet his most valuable contributor. And
this this comes to a head in eighteen seven. There's
an event they're going to hold called the Great Dictionary Dinner,
and Murray is very much looking forward to meeting his
(24:55):
mysterious again, most prolific, most accurate correspondent. But a guy
doesn't show up. Yeah, So, I mean they've been working
on this dictionary, they put all this work into it,
They have all these different contributors, they have people they
rely on greatly. I mean think of this as the
you know, on on on Wikipedia, the people who have
the verified accounts yelp, the super whatever yelper, you know,
(25:18):
like he's he's one of the insiders. And he's invited,
we're told, and he doesn't show up right, and so
Minor says, you know what, I'm gonna be the change.
I'm gonna go visit this guy. So he travels to
Broadmore and he sees this. We can paint the scene here.
He sees this huge Victorian mansion and he's justifying those assumptions, right,
(25:41):
they feel like they're being verified since okay, well yeah,
I mean he'd never been there. The story goes that
he thought so he had this address, and so he
thinks like, okay, like this must be where a professor
lives or a doctor, a medical man, a nice house.
So he shows up and he sees this massive institution.
He says, huh, I thought it was on to someone's house.
This is an institution. I guess he's mailing me from
(26:03):
his office. Yeah, he's probably the director or something like that.
So he so he started to realize things are a
little wonky, and he's just finding the most plausible explanation
he can for it. And like you said, Christopher, he thinks, okay, well,
this guy is a director of this asylum, because you
can see the side. He knows it's in asylum now
(26:26):
and and you know it may even have lightning bolts
in the background. Or that's how I imagine when you
when you happen upon an asylum that you didn't know
was an asylum. Thunder and lightning. We've all been there,
and it's the storm begins and you have to stay
there for the night, right, and the strings start rising
and the fog starts rolling in or clear. So not
done with Halloween, It's in me forever. So he goes
(26:51):
to this is a true story, folks. He goes into
the asylum. He meets the director of the asylum and
he assumes that the director of the asylum is the
famous and mysterious Doctor Minor. No, says the director, the
doctor is an inmate. Would you like to see his rooms,
(27:13):
to which Murray, uh, Murray says yeah, yeah, sure, um
to paint a picture for the listeners and ridiculous historians
out there. At this point, what Dr Minor looks like
is uh a little wise and fully bearded. I would
describe him as sort of a cross between Dumbledore Dumble.
(27:35):
There's a little bit of Dumbledore and a little bit
of Gandolf. Gandalf the White not the Gray, because he's
got this like massive white beard. You know, it's like
very prophetorial but very learned looking um but clearly has
been kind of locked up for a while. Yeah, and
has just very e in professor. In The Madman, he
is described as having very gentle eyes that make him
(27:57):
somewhat resemble portraits of money, which I thought I thought
was poetic and very kind. We do want to say
there is one indication that Murray had some inkling of
something being wrong with Dr Minor because a visitor from
America in the late eighteen eighties had thanked Murray for
(28:17):
his kindness to poor Dr Minor. He didn't really know.
He knows something was up, and that's something. Yeah, if
if you if you either Winchester book, you'll find that
there's there's that story which we've just recounted, which is
kind of the summarized and popularized version of events. Winchester
really digs into that and and kind of calls into
question how true it is um and or how close
(28:42):
to true it is there Like, as you mentioned, there's
some question about what Murray knew and when and the
time of events. And this story did come out at
the time, and I think was probably kind of summarized
and popularized by newspaperman at the time. Yeah. Yeah, they
were right about as it was occurring. We do know, however,
that when they finally did meet, they became genuine friends
(29:06):
for a long time, and Murray would continue to visit
Minor at the asylum. Again, this is the sort of
it's the sort of relationship built on words and work
and trust built that way. So you could consider it
a nineteenth century cat fishing if you want, but I
don't see it that way. You know, they saw the
(29:26):
value in one another. Murray value the knowledge of Minor,
and I think this is also a good lesson. I
don't know that the lesson was taken at the time,
but I think for us looking back, it's a really
valuable way to see that people who are incarcerated, people
who have mental conditions, people who are struggling with debilitation,
don't lose their value either to themselves, to their friends,
(29:48):
or to society. You can have a mental breakdown. You
can lose an aspect of your personality, of your life.
That doesn't mean you've lost your intelligence. It doesn't mean
you've lost the knowledge you've accrued over the years. Um. Again,
we can also, you know, I feel like films like
a Beautiful Mind or these these sort of other films
can romanticize mental illness too and say that it's a
(30:12):
that it's it's a struggle that's got to be overcome.
Um it's a tricky line. I mean, it's it's a
it's a messy thing to deal with, absolutely, and sometimes
there are no clear answers for how best to navigate
the situation, especially back then, and it's it just speaks.
It speaks so highly to Professor Murray's character that he
(30:35):
doesn't reject this guy. He sees, as you said, Christopher,
the merit of miners work, and he continues to visit him.
He says, you know what, nobody's perfect, but this guy
is great at assembling these citations, hunting stuff down for him.
We need to keep him in the game. And he
(30:57):
spoke very highly of Minor for the rest of his life.
Life in he said, we could easily illustrate the last
four centuries from doctor Minors quotations alone. Yeah, I mean
his work was invaluable. His work was invaluable, and unfortunately
his condition continued to worsen. In nineteen o two, he
(31:24):
began having delusions that he was being abducted from his
rooms at night and taken around the world where he
was forced to commit sexual assault. And because of this,
during during one delusional episode, he castrated himself, which is
um a very messy thing. Luckily, you know, he's a surgeon,
(31:47):
so he at least knew enough, uh new enough to
do it without killing himself, and his health continued to worsen. Yeah,
that's not the sort of thing that's gonna pushut your
health into a better true and Murray, his faithful friend,
now not just a colleague, begins a campaign on Miner's behalf,
(32:08):
and he says, this guy has been locked up in
here for decades. He's one of the most important contributors
to what I feel is one of the most important
books in the world after the Bible. He's harmless. Can
we let him out? And so Minor is, by direct
orders from Home Secretary Winston Churchill, released from the asylum
in nineteen ten, he's released. He's instantly deported back to
(32:31):
the United States, and he lives at St. Elizabeth's Hospital,
where he is officially diagnosed with what at the time
they called dementia pray Cocks, which was chronic deteriorating psychotic
disorder that usually began in the late teens or early adulthood.
(32:51):
This term was gradually eventually replaced by the term schizophrenia. Yeah,
so it's the kind of thing that he likely was
experiencing internally physically, and then was um, I don't know, yeah,
triggered or or enhanced by his experiences in the war, right, exactly, exactly.
(33:11):
And in nineteen twenty, Dr Minor passes away in Hartford, Connecticut.
He had been moved in nineteen nineteen to a retreat
for the quote elderly insane. James Murray passes away in
nineteen fifteen. And if you remember from our earlier mentioned
(33:32):
the dictionary, the final results of the Oxford English Dictionary
were not published until nineteen So neither doctor Minor nor
Professor Murray ever got to witness or direct, you know,
they never got to hold the book. Yeah. The their
their life's work. It literally was their life's work and
they did not live to see a completion. I mean,
but that's that's the story of so many great accomplishments
(33:55):
in human culture. And you think about something like the
Sagratta Familiathedral in Barcelona, that that Gaudy was working on it.
He died decades ago and it's still underway. You know.
It's I think it's admirable to think that you might
contribute something to human knowledge and the human culture, that
you will put a process in motion. And you know,
(34:17):
granted Murray, Murray thought it would just take a brief
period of time to wrap up this dictionary thing, put
a couple of words on a page, this, that and
the other, and we're done. Uh No, I mean, we
we're talking like it goes well into the twenties. But
to to set something in motion that goes beyond yourself
is something, you know, not a lot of us get
to do. And learning the stories of the people behind
(34:40):
these contributions to society is so valuable because I mean
you think about like the mathematicians, for instance, the women
who contributed to the Nazi missions, uh that were written
about in Hidden Figures, and there was a movie. It's
super important for us to know that everything we're talking
about in history was accomplished through human undertaking. You just
(35:00):
gotta decide to do something, get past any structural road
box that are in the way, but push forward, and
I mean people can accomplish them really great things. Yeah,
it calls to mind that old proverb. What is it
a society grows great when old men plant trees whose
shade they know they shall never sit in? Have you
ever heard that one? I haven't? Like. Yeah, it's and
(35:23):
that's that's the kind of inspiring noble thing. We know
that the Oxford English Dictionary is, in a very real
way a guide post for the entirety of the English language.
And you know, I think we misuse the words sometimes,
but it's it's noble. It's truly noble to be able
(35:46):
to participate in something of that, uh, that level of significance.
And here's hoping that we can all get a chance
to create something like this. You know, that's a that's
a that's at all order. But we can try what
you don't want to, we're kind of dictionary with me
for the rest of your life. Uh, do you tell
(36:09):
me about your benefits? But what are you what are
you offering, Uh, you know, I've got a I've got
a special on um guest special on Derrito's okay, because
of my relationship with Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards,
um Ben. Have you ever have you ever actually so,
have you accessed the O E ED digitally? Have you
held a copy of the book itself? Yeah? I mean
(36:32):
these things are massive, like the huge books, so dense.
Um the one now that are like the most current
one that was kind of setting stone in the nineties,
has like five hundred thousand words. I don't know if
you've seen this. Some friends of mine and I M
a while ago, gave a friend this as a wedding present.
But you can buy the entire Oxford English Dictionary in
(36:53):
a compressed version. So it's kind of like the size
of a big book, but it it's in it's in
two volumes, kind of hard bound, comes in a box,
but it's the whole thing in there, and it comes
with a magnifying glass. Yes, yes, yes, it's so the
print is so small you've really got to get in there.
But it's it's all of it. I mean we're talking
(37:14):
like more than two million citations. Like it's just it's
so dense and the look that magnifying glass is not
some cute marketing thing. You need it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I don't know how people will react to this story.
I'm fascinated by I find it inspiring, you know. And
I really appreciate what you said about mental illness not
(37:38):
negating somebody's value or they're worth in the world. And
Christopher has been an absolute pleasure to have you on
this show this week. Thanks for coming back after the
first episode. I thought you might be done. No no,
I stuck around this week. Um, but yeah, if you'll
if you'll have me back, I'll happily be back. Um.
I do want to mention one more thing about dictionaries
just in general. I think they're super cool, you know.
(37:59):
And we we talked about these things that just sort
of exist. But the very first dictionary that we had
in the English language was put together in the sixteen hundreds,
and it was a product of cultural mixing. It was
a product of the Renaissance. It was a product of
English incorporating so many words from other languages, from French,
(38:21):
from Latin, from Greek, and from Hebrew. The first dictionary
was really just a guide to what at the time
were weird words like the difficult ones. So the very
first dictionaries, back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE,
they weren't comprehensive. It was just like, Okay, everybody knows
the words we use. Here's a description of the hard ones. Yeah, yeah,
(38:44):
yeah yeah. And I want to hear from some of
the ridiculous historians out there. Maybe you guys can comment
on the Facebook page. Because when I was growing up,
when I was using dictionaries, I always had that one
friend who would use the dictionary too to learn how
to spell word, which always seemed crazy to me, because
how do you look up a word if you don't
(39:05):
know how to spell the word already? But I know,
I know, I'm not the only one who knows someone
like that. I think even in like in the in
the Miracle Worker, right, um, maybe someone in their uses
the dictionary as a spelling guide. But maybe maybe Keller herself.
I don't know, But um, I know I'm not the
only one out there who's experienced this. Does anyone out
(39:25):
there do that? Or do you just use it to
define things? I've always used it to define things. I've
used it to define things. I guess you could. You
could use it to find the spelling the word. By
attempting to go through stumble through it, you get a
guess pre autocorrect. So it's a real pain man trying
to look up words in English demand or and Dictionary,
(39:46):
just because of the different you know, the idiograms versus
the it's a whole thing. Yeah, so so I I
also want to add a request to Ridiculous historians. When
this episode comes out, could you visit us on our
Facebook page and let us know some of your favorite
obscure words. We are enamored with strange, unusual and anachronistic words,
(40:14):
and it's no secret that the English language is chock
full of them. You know what I mean? Do you
have an obscure word that you like? Oh gosh, it's
been stuck in your head recently. You know. One of
the nice things about working here at house Staff Works
is you get to dive into all sorts of weird stuff.
Um and I I did write a piece for the
website a year or so ago on archaic insults, on
(40:38):
words that we're insulting a while ago and that today
have fallen out of fashion. And I think that was
kind of brought to light by uh. By the time,
our our president and the leader of a certain nation
on the Korean peninsula were trading barbs back and forth
um and uh, and people were like, what's a dotard?
(40:59):
And so so we decided to investigate not only that,
but a bunch of other words like um, slum, gullion, Uh,
I'm I'm drawing a blanket head probably one perhaps, perhaps perhaps,
but anyway, I mean, all of this, it just amounts
to words, words. Words. We can post a link on
the on the Facebook page rights historians. I'll post a
(41:21):
link to that article. You guys can inform yourselves. And
that does it for me. I mean, unless you need
anything else from me. No, come back, hang out, let's go,
let's go, let's go hit the scene. And as we said,
our trustee co host Nol is out adventuring. But Christopher,
you mentioned that you're hoping he's just directly behind somebody.
(41:42):
Wait he should I turn? No, Hey, Nol, how's it going? Well?
Hey guys, Uh, it's it's me Nolum. I'm in Los Angeles,
in the in the in my hotel room in the
Hollywood Roosevelt, which apparently is where Marilyn Monroe died. Um,
I've been watching the Haunting of Hill House alone in
(42:02):
this creepy hotel by myself at night. I think I'm
still kind of on East Coast brain haven't quite made
the switch yet, so I've been feeling like I've been
seeing some apparitions hovering around this uh really boogie um
canopy bed that I'm that I'm in laying in right now,
in fact, podcasting till you find people. UM. I'm really
glad that Christopher was able to sit in and talk
(42:23):
about the Oxford English Dictionary. That's pretty cool. Um. Sorry
if I sound a little out of it, I've been
I've been working late nights and getting up early, and
as far as I'm concerned, I don't even know what
time it is right now. But godspeed, ridiculous historians to
you and yours and Christopher and Ben and I'll see
you on on the flip side if I return and
don't get murdered by ghosts in the night. And that's
(42:46):
it for today. Christopher, I hope that you make this
a habit. I hope you returned to shed some more
light on some of these strange stories of human civilization.
And I let you off easy this time, pal, but
next time I'd love to hear some more weird cover songs. Ben,
I can do it for you. Thanks Ben, Thanks Noel,
(43:08):
thanks Casey, you guys listening out there. Thanks for thanks
for having me, and we'll see you again next week
We're here, we're live while we're recording this live. Welcome
to the show Ridiculous Historians. My name is Ben. We are,
of course, joined with our super producer, Casey pegram my
trustee co host Noel is off on some lovely adventures
on the other side of the country, but we'll return
very soon. Speaking of returning, we are incredibly fortunate today
(00:47):
to have our returning guest host joining us, Christopher Haciotis.
Thanks for coming, man, Thanks for having me, Ben, Thanks
for having me, Casey. No wherever you are, whenever you are,
however you are, thank you. Yes, oh man, I can't
wait until I hope we can reveal some of the
cool stuff that Nola is working on. But I what
(01:08):
I really wish were happening right now is that we
would talk about Noel not being here and then anyone
listening to this podcast would just slowly turn around and
he's standing right behind them. Oh that's great. No, that's
that's my dream. It's my dream. But it was also
it was Halloween recently, so maybe I'm still in that mindset.
I'm definitely still in that mindset. Oh man. It's the
(01:30):
most wonderful time of the year. I love Halloween. What hey,
what did you do for Halloween? Dressed up as a
woodland creature? I was kind of Wolfe took the family
around the neighborhood and did not accept any candy because
we've got a little baby who's not old enough for
candy yet. And I would feel like a real bomb
taking candy from taking candy for a baby who couldn't
(01:52):
eat it under the pretenses that it's served really for
me and I grown man, I can afford my own candy. There,
there you go. That's that speaks high really. Uh, that
speaks to your character in a in a very complimentary way.
Your candy ethics are on point. I think that's something
to be proud of. Thank you. I would have done
the opposite. You would have just a baby around. Yes, yeah,
(02:15):
I did think like maybe it would be fun to
push a stroll around the neighborhood, but with no baby
in there and just be the person with an empty stroller.
Oh that's weird. That's weird, Christopher. But uh, it's not
Halloween anymore, right, we should divest these spooky thoughts from ourshole.
I'm always so reluctant to give up the ghost Halloween.
(02:36):
But you're right, things move on progress. That's the name
of the game for the human species, hopefully in the theory.
And today's episode is something that I thought would be
fascinating for anybody who's a fan of words and one
who's a fan of writing. Today's episode is about the
(02:58):
strange origin of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, this is
something that you and I in particular, have have used
pretty frequently over the years. I have, Yeah, dictionaries of
many kinds, I think coming super handy. Um, whether you're
a professional writer, whether you're an amateur writer, whether you
don't really care about writing at all, but you want
to know what a word means, you can look it
(03:19):
up in the dictionary. It's a great thing. Yeah, And
it's funny that you mentioned this because Noel and I
will often have conversations where we one of us is
on a rant about something and then we decide to
use a word because it sounds particularly enticing, you know,
(03:40):
only too later, usually when it's just the two of
us hanging out, only for us to later go okay,
one of us needs to look that up and make
sure it means what we think it means. We're using
the right meaning where you were saying it properly. I mean,
that's what the dictionary is for. But also that's what
Facebook is for, too, right, and social media. I've think
(04:00):
anyone who is anyone in the podcast world is very
familiar with mispronounced words. Uh there's a lot of words
out there, and you might accidentally say something a little incorrectly.
But we rely on people like Ridiculous Historians the Facebook
group associated with this fine podcast to point out in
a constructive and critical manner, any foible, any misstep, any
(04:23):
misuse of award. Oh man, you really put us on
the tight rope here. Man. All right, well, let's let's
give it a go. The Oxford English Dictionary has been
around for a long time, but perhaps not as long
as many of us would assume. The work on the
(04:45):
dictionary began. I guess in a larger historical context is
fairly recent. It began in eighteen fifty seven. Yeah, well
that's when there was a call put out for a
collection of words, a definition of words banning the twelfth
century to the present day. At the time. Um work
(05:06):
actually didn't get underway though, until the late eighteen seventies.
Eighteen seventy nine, I believe. And it took five years
for the first volume of the O E. D As
the kids on the street call it to be published
right right, And here we introduce our first character for
this story, a fellow named Professor James Murray. It was
(05:27):
a challenging assignment for Murray, who was the editor of
this of this dictionary. The way the process worked was
relatively simple. People would send in entries for words, and
the Oxford English Dictionary functions as what's called an historical dictionary,
meaning it will talk about the development of a word
(05:50):
rather than just its present day usage. So you'll see
a little bit of etymology in the dictionary, will see
a lot of etymology. I mean the thing. The thing
about the Oxford English Dictionary is it's it doesn't us
give you the definition of the word, right, it goes
into the history of the word. We said, the first
volume of the dictionary wasn't published until four I mean,
this was a lifelong pursuit from Murray and his team.
(06:11):
The final volume of the dictionary wasn't published until that's crazy, Yeah,
that's that's insane. And and it took a lot of blood,
sweat and tears because we have to remember it was
much more difficult to aggregate information back then, you know
what I mean. These people had to literally write this
stuff out, usually by hand, and send it be a post. Yeah,
(06:34):
a majority of us in the modern world, and I
would assume most of us listening to this podcast, we
live in a wealth of information. We have so many
things available to us, We have so much knowledge available
to us. But I think it's really, really, really easy
to take that for granted, right, Like you just look
something up. But for you to look something up, another
(06:55):
human being had to have put that thing in a
place for it to be searchable in the first place. So,
I mean, imagine the task of speaking a language and thinking,
you know what, all these words we just said in
the past twenty seconds, I just used forty of them,
Let's catalog them, let's itemize them, let's label them. I mean,
(07:16):
this is it's a it's a crazy undertaking, it's wild.
You have to define what a language is, what is
inside the language, what's outside the language. You have to
talk to linguistics, you have to talk to anthropologists, you
have to talk to authors and books and what's gobbledegook? Right,
which is that in the dictionary. I don't know. I
(07:37):
believe the actually so that I think that's a very
good way to paint the picture here. Professor James Murray
knew this was going to be a huge, laborious, herculean effort. However,
he underestimated the enormity of the task. When they first read,
(08:00):
too edit this new English dictionary, they thought, this is
going to take a decade, and this will probably be gosh,
I don't know, guys, around seven thousand pages long, uh,
in four volumes. Let's call it four volumes. But they
ended up with something much much larger. By the time
the final results are published in it's twelve volumes long.
(08:21):
It is comprised of four hundred and fourteen thousand, eight
hundred twenty five words defined, and it has almost two
million citations employed to illustrate what they mean. As Murray
is working on this, he builds a corrugated iron shed
that he decides to call the Scriptorium. And the scriptorium
(08:43):
houses him and his small team of assistance, as well
as this deluge of slips of paper that have been
mailed to them that are each you know, an entry
in the dictionary. Yeah, and and this is all taking
place in the UK. So this is just one country,
you know, right, this is this isn't even trying to
get the breadth of global knowledge. I do really like
(09:04):
the name Scriptorium. I imagine Murray having a rough day
at home, maybe the kids are being kind of a pain,
and he storms out of his house, slams the door, said,
I'm going to the Scriptorium. I can't handle this. To
the scriptorium, to the Scriptorium. I am just gonna start
saying that I am going to find something in our office.
I'm gonna label it the scriptorium. It won't be this
(09:24):
studio that's two on the nose, but I'm looking for
a scriptorius. Next time you shout I'm off to the scriptorium.
I'm really excited to see all of our co workers
look around the musedly and confusedly and befuddledly and uh,
but you and I will share something there we go.
I'll know what you're doing, and you for listening. In casey,
are you in on this? I'm totally in Casey on
the case, ladies and gentlemen. So as as people are
(09:49):
responding to this call, this this crowdsourcing of dictionary entries.
Professor Murray begins to notice that there's one shy meaning
star out of all of his correspondence, the most prolific,
the most consistent correspondent, the man who was sent in
more than ten thousand entries to this developing dictionary, a
(10:13):
guy named doctor William C. Minor. All that Murray knows
about Minor is that he is a doctor who was
a surgeon. He lives in Crowthorne, in the English countryside
in Berkshire, and Murray reasonably assumes that Minor must be
quote a practicing medical men of literary taste with a
(10:36):
good deal of lesio. I like, yeah, sounds like the
kind of guy who would send in, uh sending entries
to the dictionary the Dictionary Project. Did they call it
the Dictionary Project at the time? I think they did.
I mean, dictionaries existed before the O. E. D. So
I think the word probably was out there. And here's
(10:56):
here's where we introduce our second character, doctor William Chester Minor,
an American. Yeah, so you've got this American guy who's
uh contributing to one of the pillars of the English language.
What do we know about Dr Minor? Well, we know
(11:17):
that as you said he does reside in the UK.
He was an American, not only an American, but a surgeon.
Not only a surgeon, but a veteran, a veteran he
but he he also had sort of a global background, right,
so he existed in a world where many languages were
available to him. His parents were from New England. They
(11:38):
were missionaries, and Minor was actually born in Ceylon, which
today is known as Sri Lanka. So he grew up
in um the son of the son of Americans in
a former British colony. A lot of languages are kind
of swirling around him. He's in that milieu. Uh. He
comes back to the U S and he ends up
fighting in the Civil War. Mm hmmm. He's fighting, but
(12:02):
he's working as a surgeon, right, so he's he's a
medical doctor. He's in the Civil War. He experiences some
horrific things, as many people did. But um, it seems
to have really taken a toll on Dr Minor, on
his mental health, on his well being. Really rough stuff.
I mean, he was in situations where he saw sort
(12:25):
of incendiary attacks. He witnessed other soldiers burning to death. Yeah,
this is terrible, um ben I don't know if you
know about this, but what Dr Minor was ordered to
do to a certain deserter, right, yeah, it's it's a
terrible story. So he served, as you said, in various
(12:46):
incredibly bloody conflicts, including the Battle of the Wilderness in
eighteen sixty four, which was a blood bath. The particular
story we're talking about now concerns an Irish soldier in
the Union Army. Minor was told to punish the soldier
carry out his punishment by branding him on the face
(13:09):
with a hot iron with a capital D for deserter. Yeah.
So this was was an Irish citizen who was fighting
for the cause of the Union but decided he was
done with the battle, wanted to leave, wanted to leave
the army was I assume captured putting the brig and
uh and Minor was ordered to brand this guy against
his wishes, against the wishes of both of them, I think,
(13:30):
and this haunts him, This affects him for the rest
of his life. At the end of the American Civil War,
he is still serving. He's in New York City for
a time. He spends a lot of his time living
(13:51):
in the c d underbelly of New York. If he's
not working, he's off in the red light district, cavorting,
having a having some frolic time, right, I mean, it's
it's it's not uncommon for soldiers who come home from
war to have a really rough time, to look for
solace in places they might not otherwise have in the past,
(14:12):
to have a hard time keeping things together, too, undertake
risky activity too, I mean, even to see things that
aren't there, to imagine a reality that doesn't line up
with the reality experience by the majority of us. Absolutely,
and by eighteen sixty seven, the Army is completely done
(14:33):
with his behavior. They find that it is unethical and
a moral so they transfer him to a remote post
in Florida. And we're gonna, let's let's pause right there,
because Professor Murray doesn't know any of this. He doesn't
know anything about miners past. He only knows that the
guy has medical knowledge, seems to be living in either
(14:56):
retirement or he's relatively well off. And the guy has
a lot of time on his hands, and he loves words. Yeah,
so that's a that's a little background about Minor and
and and Minor is sending in these entries to the
Oxford English Dictionary Project to Professor Murray, and they seem
to be really great entries. They're really detailed, they're really varied,
they are voluminous, they are deeply researched. What Professor Murray
(15:22):
did not know was that his most faithful correspondent and
contributor was writing to him from a lunatic asylum where
he was confined for committing homicide. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's
the that's the strangest part of it, And it sounds
(15:42):
like something you could maybe have a weird, nervous laugh about,
but the story itself is quite tragic. It turns out
that Dr Minor was not in full possession of his faculties. Yeah,
and at this point he had moved to London, right right, Okay,
So he was diagnosed in eighteen sixty eight as delusional
(16:04):
and he was considered a suicide and homicide risk. So
with his consent, he was admitted to the Government Hospital
for the Insane and washing d C and officially retired
from the U. S. Army. In eighteen seventy one, he
was released and he visited his family and friends and
then boardered his ship to London, hoping that a change
of scenery would quote cure him, but his paranoia followed
(16:29):
him across the Atlanta And that's that's a not uncommon
treatment at the time. I mean, we're back in the
days before modern psychology, certainly before modern psychiatric drugs and
any sort of treatment talk, therapy, any sort of rehabilitation
like that. I mean, there's just a lunatic asylum or
a change of scenery. You know, maybe maybe something different
(16:52):
will be nice for him. Maybe being in the United
States is reminding him of the horrors he witnessed. Maybe
he's too close to the brothels. Let's just let's send
him to England. Yeah, and his family had the means
to support this travel because it was an opportunity that
many people at the time could not have reasonably pursued.
(17:15):
But the problem was that his untreated mental condition began
to worsen. He was having delusions, he was having crazy
mood swings, and he was sinking deeper and deeper into paranoia.
Particularly as his condition escalated, he would become more and
more fixated on paranoid thoughts about people with Irish nationality
(17:38):
due to that horrible story you mentioned earlier, when he
had to brand the guy in the face. He settles
originally in place called Lambeth. Yeah, and Lambeth Street is
it's in London. Um, it's kind of a seedy neighborhood. Um.
And this I think is the point when we should
introduce the next character in this tale, this tragedy. Um.
If we want to call it a tragedy, we're not
the only ones, because this is what ends up being
(18:01):
called at the time, the Lambeth Tragedy. George Merritt is
the next entry into this tale. George Merritt is a
working man. He takes a walk every day to the
Red Lion Brewery in London. And one day he's taking
a walk and he encounters Dr Miner, and Dr Miner,
who is in the grips of a mental episode, feels
(18:25):
threatened right by George Merritt, believes that Merritt has broken
into his room at some point and shoots and kills George. Yeah.
And this is this is where I you know, I
tried to find some newspaper reports in the time, and
it's really unclear to me, and I think this is
just the case in in reporting at the time, But
(18:46):
I don't know exactly whether Merritt was trying to enter
a door near where Minor was living, or if this
this happened near the brewery or well, so the records
show that Merritt was shot in the back as he
was walking away from Minor. Right, so, Minor perhaps was
(19:09):
in his home experiencing one of these delusions and just
burst out onto the street and thought that the first
person he saw was the imagined culprit m. And of
course the authority has become involved. There is a trial,
and during the trial the full extent of miners insanity
becomes revealed for the first time in public, and that's
(19:33):
that's part of what propels the Lambeth tragedy to the
stage of international news. Miner is eventually judged not guilty
on grounds of insanity, and he is sent to be
detained in England's newest asylum, but they don't ever say
how long he's going to be there. I think this
(19:55):
is the sort of thing where, you know, on on
the one hand, you can see this as a um
un enlightened treatment. You know, he's not just put to
death from murder. You know, it seems like they're doing
the nice thing. They're sending him off to a place
where he can be away from people he might harm.
But there's an understanding that there's something um not chemically
(20:15):
operating in the mind. It's maybe not entirely his fault, right,
So he sent to broad Moore, which is a place
for the criminally insane. That sounds like a nice thing,
but the conditions weren't amazing. And people at the time,
you know, it's not like they were called patients. They
weren't treated as um folks with a medical issue. These
the people at broad Moore were referred to as criminals
(20:39):
or as lunatics. Basically, you're looking at a situation where
you're putting a room, the door is locked, and there's
not a lot of treatment. You're just removed from society.
Minor did have his own cell, and Minor actually had
a second cell, right, so he had two adjoining cells,
the second of which was used for his significant, currently
(21:00):
voluminous collection of antiquarian books. That's right. He was living
the high life, well compared to other inmates or other patients.
But the didn't call the patients. They call him lunatics
and criminals, right, So he had this extensive collection of books.
He was a very it's a very well read person,
(21:23):
and the American Vice Consul General directly intervened to allow
Dr Minor to have these amenities. Right, although he's in
England and he had committed his crime there, he's still
a U. S. Citizen and um a veteran of the
Union Army, so there's some consideration being given. And he
(21:43):
has correspondence as well. The the entire time, he has
relationships with book dealers, booksellers in Oxford in particular, and
it is through this association that he hears about the
open call for submissions to what will become the Oxford
English Dictionary. And so a lot of this has lost
(22:06):
to history, but we can reasonably imagine what Dr Miner's
reaction was. It's not like he's gonna go travel anywhere.
It's not like he is living a super stressful life
full of deadlines. As recounted in a fantastic book called
The Professor and the Madman, a Tale of Murder, Insanity
(22:27):
and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester,
and I came out in Yes, that is correct. As
recounted in this book, Minor saw this as somewhat of
an escape, you know what I mean? It's a way,
it's a way to his body, maybe in these four walls,
but it's a way for him to send his thoughts
(22:48):
and his influence beyond his cell. Absolutely, and it's a
necessary escape, right. But he knew regard list of his
stability at the time. He knew that his submissions might
run the chance of being rejected. Essentially, he might not
(23:09):
be able to play the game if you revealed too
much about himself. So he always signed his letters the
same way Broadmoor, crowth Or in Berkshire. And that means
his identity remained enigmatic to everybody who's working on the
dictionary for years and years and years. Murray and Minor
never meet no And and at this point he kind
(23:30):
of builds up his own reputation, not based on who
he is, not based on the letters after his name.
If he's a you know, you don't have this weight
of authority from your job, from your name, from your class.
This authority that he gains with the O E. ED
Project is based solely on his work and through these submissions,
(23:54):
I mean they prove invaluable because he's got this collection
of antiquarian books, books that are out of print, books
that are ancient books that are are not widely used.
So he's coming through these books. He comes up with
this massive index of thousands of words. He defines them,
he provides their use in a sentence, which you know,
it sounds like a spelling be kind of thing, right,
(24:15):
But that's how you know what a word is. And
the way you define a word is to see how
it's used. And if you want to look at a
word that you don't know or that other people don't know,
you have to show how it has been used in
the past. And that's where his collection of books comes
in super handy. Yeah, and eventually you'll you'll hear a
(24:35):
couple of different counts of this. But eventually Murray decides
that he has to meet his most valuable contributor. And
this this comes to a head in eighteen seven. There's
an event they're going to hold called the Great Dictionary Dinner,
and Murray is very much looking forward to meeting his
(24:55):
mysterious again, most prolific, most accurate correspondent. But a guy
doesn't show up. Yeah, So, I mean they've been working
on this dictionary, they put all this work into it,
They have all these different contributors, they have people they
rely on greatly. I mean think of this as the
you know, on on on Wikipedia, the people who have
the verified accounts yelp, the super whatever yelper, you know,
(25:18):
like he's he's one of the insiders. And he's invited,
we're told, and he doesn't show up right, and so
Minor says, you know what, I'm gonna be the change.
I'm gonna go visit this guy. So he travels to
Broadmore and he sees this. We can paint the scene here.
He sees this huge Victorian mansion and he's justifying those assumptions, right,
(25:41):
they feel like they're being verified since okay, well yeah,
I mean he'd never been there. The story goes that
he thought so he had this address, and so he
thinks like, okay, like this must be where a professor
lives or a doctor, a medical man, a nice house.
So he shows up and he sees this massive institution.
He says, huh, I thought it was on to someone's house.
This is an institution. I guess he's mailing me from
(26:03):
his office. Yeah, he's probably the director or something like that.
So he so he started to realize things are a
little wonky, and he's just finding the most plausible explanation
he can for it. And like you said, Christopher, he thinks, okay, well,
this guy is a director of this asylum, because you
can see the side. He knows it's in asylum now
(26:26):
and and you know it may even have lightning bolts
in the background. Or that's how I imagine when you
when you happen upon an asylum that you didn't know
was an asylum. Thunder and lightning. We've all been there,
and it's the storm begins and you have to stay
there for the night, right, and the strings start rising
and the fog starts rolling in or clear. So not
done with Halloween, It's in me forever. So he goes
(26:51):
to this is a true story, folks. He goes into
the asylum. He meets the director of the asylum and
he assumes that the director of the asylum is the
famous and mysterious Doctor Minor. No, says the director, the
doctor is an inmate. Would you like to see his rooms,
(27:13):
to which Murray, uh, Murray says yeah, yeah, sure, um
to paint a picture for the listeners and ridiculous historians
out there. At this point, what Dr Minor looks like
is uh a little wise and fully bearded. I would
describe him as sort of a cross between Dumbledore Dumble.
(27:35):
There's a little bit of Dumbledore and a little bit
of Gandolf. Gandalf the White not the Gray, because he's
got this like massive white beard. You know, it's like
very prophetorial but very learned looking um but clearly has
been kind of locked up for a while. Yeah, and
has just very e in professor. In The Madman, he
is described as having very gentle eyes that make him
(27:57):
somewhat resemble portraits of money, which I thought I thought
was poetic and very kind. We do want to say
there is one indication that Murray had some inkling of
something being wrong with Dr Minor because a visitor from
America in the late eighteen eighties had thanked Murray for
(28:17):
his kindness to poor Dr Minor. He didn't really know.
He knows something was up, and that's something. Yeah, if
if you if you either Winchester book, you'll find that
there's there's that story which we've just recounted, which is
kind of the summarized and popularized version of events. Winchester
really digs into that and and kind of calls into
question how true it is um and or how close
(28:42):
to true it is there Like, as you mentioned, there's
some question about what Murray knew and when and the
time of events. And this story did come out at
the time, and I think was probably kind of summarized
and popularized by newspaperman at the time. Yeah. Yeah, they
were right about as it was occurring. We do know, however,
that when they finally did meet, they became genuine friends
(29:06):
for a long time, and Murray would continue to visit
Minor at the asylum. Again, this is the sort of
it's the sort of relationship built on words and work
and trust built that way. So you could consider it
a nineteenth century cat fishing if you want, but I
don't see it that way. You know, they saw the
(29:26):
value in one another. Murray value the knowledge of Minor,
and I think this is also a good lesson. I
don't know that the lesson was taken at the time,
but I think for us looking back, it's a really
valuable way to see that people who are incarcerated, people
who have mental conditions, people who are struggling with debilitation,
don't lose their value either to themselves, to their friends,
(29:48):
or to society. You can have a mental breakdown. You
can lose an aspect of your personality, of your life.
That doesn't mean you've lost your intelligence. It doesn't mean
you've lost the knowledge you've accrued over the years. Um. Again,
we can also, you know, I feel like films like
a Beautiful Mind or these these sort of other films
can romanticize mental illness too and say that it's a
(30:12):
that it's it's a struggle that's got to be overcome.
Um it's a tricky line. I mean, it's it's a
it's a messy thing to deal with, absolutely, and sometimes
there are no clear answers for how best to navigate
the situation, especially back then, and it's it just speaks.
It speaks so highly to Professor Murray's character that he
(30:35):
doesn't reject this guy. He sees, as you said, Christopher,
the merit of miners work, and he continues to visit him.
He says, you know what, nobody's perfect, but this guy
is great at assembling these citations, hunting stuff down for him.
We need to keep him in the game. And he
(30:57):
spoke very highly of Minor for the rest of his life.
Life in he said, we could easily illustrate the last
four centuries from doctor Minors quotations alone. Yeah, I mean
his work was invaluable. His work was invaluable, and unfortunately
his condition continued to worsen. In nineteen o two, he
(31:24):
began having delusions that he was being abducted from his
rooms at night and taken around the world where he
was forced to commit sexual assault. And because of this,
during during one delusional episode, he castrated himself, which is
um a very messy thing. Luckily, you know, he's a surgeon,
(31:47):
so he at least knew enough, uh new enough to
do it without killing himself, and his health continued to worsen. Yeah,
that's not the sort of thing that's gonna pushut your
health into a better true and Murray, his faithful friend,
now not just a colleague, begins a campaign on Miner's behalf,
(32:08):
and he says, this guy has been locked up in
here for decades. He's one of the most important contributors
to what I feel is one of the most important
books in the world after the Bible. He's harmless. Can
we let him out? And so Minor is, by direct
orders from Home Secretary Winston Churchill, released from the asylum
in nineteen ten, he's released. He's instantly deported back to
(32:31):
the United States, and he lives at St. Elizabeth's Hospital,
where he is officially diagnosed with what at the time
they called dementia pray Cocks, which was chronic deteriorating psychotic
disorder that usually began in the late teens or early adulthood.
(32:51):
This term was gradually eventually replaced by the term schizophrenia. Yeah,
so it's the kind of thing that he likely was
experiencing internally physically, and then was um, I don't know, yeah,
triggered or or enhanced by his experiences in the war, right, exactly, exactly.
(33:11):
And in nineteen twenty, Dr Minor passes away in Hartford, Connecticut.
He had been moved in nineteen nineteen to a retreat
for the quote elderly insane. James Murray passes away in
nineteen fifteen. And if you remember from our earlier mentioned
(33:32):
the dictionary, the final results of the Oxford English Dictionary
were not published until nineteen So neither doctor Minor nor
Professor Murray ever got to witness or direct, you know,
they never got to hold the book. Yeah. The their
their life's work. It literally was their life's work and
they did not live to see a completion. I mean,
but that's that's the story of so many great accomplishments
(33:55):
in human culture. And you think about something like the
Sagratta Familiathedral in Barcelona, that that Gaudy was working on it.
He died decades ago and it's still underway. You know.
It's I think it's admirable to think that you might
contribute something to human knowledge and the human culture, that
you will put a process in motion. And you know,
(34:17):
granted Murray, Murray thought it would just take a brief
period of time to wrap up this dictionary thing, put
a couple of words on a page, this, that and
the other, and we're done. Uh No, I mean, we
we're talking like it goes well into the twenties. But
to to set something in motion that goes beyond yourself
is something, you know, not a lot of us get
to do. And learning the stories of the people behind
(34:40):
these contributions to society is so valuable because I mean
you think about like the mathematicians, for instance, the women
who contributed to the Nazi missions, uh that were written
about in Hidden Figures, and there was a movie. It's
super important for us to know that everything we're talking
about in history was accomplished through human undertaking. You just
(35:00):
gotta decide to do something, get past any structural road
box that are in the way, but push forward, and
I mean people can accomplish them really great things. Yeah,
it calls to mind that old proverb. What is it
a society grows great when old men plant trees whose
shade they know they shall never sit in? Have you
ever heard that one? I haven't? Like. Yeah, it's and
(35:23):
that's that's the kind of inspiring noble thing. We know
that the Oxford English Dictionary is, in a very real
way a guide post for the entirety of the English language.
And you know, I think we misuse the words sometimes,
but it's it's noble. It's truly noble to be able
(35:46):
to participate in something of that, uh, that level of significance.
And here's hoping that we can all get a chance
to create something like this. You know, that's a that's
a that's at all order. But we can try what
you don't want to, we're kind of dictionary with me
for the rest of your life. Uh, do you tell
(36:09):
me about your benefits? But what are you what are
you offering, Uh, you know, I've got a I've got
a special on um guest special on Derrito's okay, because
of my relationship with Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards,
um Ben. Have you ever have you ever actually so,
have you accessed the O E ED digitally? Have you
held a copy of the book itself? Yeah? I mean
(36:32):
these things are massive, like the huge books, so dense.
Um the one now that are like the most current
one that was kind of setting stone in the nineties,
has like five hundred thousand words. I don't know if
you've seen this. Some friends of mine and I M
a while ago, gave a friend this as a wedding present.
But you can buy the entire Oxford English Dictionary in
(36:53):
a compressed version. So it's kind of like the size
of a big book, but it it's in it's in
two volumes, kind of hard bound, comes in a box,
but it's the whole thing in there, and it comes
with a magnifying glass. Yes, yes, yes, it's so the
print is so small you've really got to get in there.
But it's it's all of it. I mean we're talking
(37:14):
like more than two million citations. Like it's just it's
so dense and the look that magnifying glass is not
some cute marketing thing. You need it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I don't know how people will react to this story.
I'm fascinated by I find it inspiring, you know. And
I really appreciate what you said about mental illness not
(37:38):
negating somebody's value or they're worth in the world. And
Christopher has been an absolute pleasure to have you on
this show this week. Thanks for coming back after the
first episode. I thought you might be done. No no,
I stuck around this week. Um, but yeah, if you'll
if you'll have me back, I'll happily be back. Um.
I do want to mention one more thing about dictionaries
just in general. I think they're super cool, you know.
(37:59):
And we we talked about these things that just sort
of exist. But the very first dictionary that we had
in the English language was put together in the sixteen hundreds,
and it was a product of cultural mixing. It was
a product of the Renaissance. It was a product of
English incorporating so many words from other languages, from French,
(38:21):
from Latin, from Greek, and from Hebrew. The first dictionary
was really just a guide to what at the time
were weird words like the difficult ones. So the very
first dictionaries, back in the sixteenth and seventeenth century CE,
they weren't comprehensive. It was just like, Okay, everybody knows
the words we use. Here's a description of the hard ones. Yeah, yeah,
(38:44):
yeah yeah. And I want to hear from some of
the ridiculous historians out there. Maybe you guys can comment
on the Facebook page. Because when I was growing up,
when I was using dictionaries, I always had that one
friend who would use the dictionary too to learn how
to spell word, which always seemed crazy to me, because
how do you look up a word if you don't
(39:05):
know how to spell the word already? But I know,
I know, I'm not the only one who knows someone
like that. I think even in like in the in
the Miracle Worker, right, um, maybe someone in their uses
the dictionary as a spelling guide. But maybe maybe Keller herself.
I don't know, But um, I know I'm not the
only one out there who's experienced this. Does anyone out
(39:25):
there do that? Or do you just use it to
define things? I've always used it to define things. I've
used it to define things. I guess you could. You
could use it to find the spelling the word. By
attempting to go through stumble through it, you get a
guess pre autocorrect. So it's a real pain man trying
to look up words in English demand or and Dictionary,
(39:46):
just because of the different you know, the idiograms versus
the it's a whole thing. Yeah, so so I I
also want to add a request to Ridiculous historians. When
this episode comes out, could you visit us on our
Facebook page and let us know some of your favorite
obscure words. We are enamored with strange, unusual and anachronistic words,
(40:14):
and it's no secret that the English language is chock
full of them. You know what I mean? Do you
have an obscure word that you like? Oh gosh, it's
been stuck in your head recently. You know. One of
the nice things about working here at house Staff Works
is you get to dive into all sorts of weird stuff.
Um and I I did write a piece for the
website a year or so ago on archaic insults, on
(40:38):
words that we're insulting a while ago and that today
have fallen out of fashion. And I think that was
kind of brought to light by uh. By the time,
our our president and the leader of a certain nation
on the Korean peninsula were trading barbs back and forth
um and uh, and people were like, what's a dotard?
(40:59):
And so so we decided to investigate not only that,
but a bunch of other words like um, slum, gullion, Uh,
I'm I'm drawing a blanket head probably one perhaps, perhaps perhaps,
but anyway, I mean, all of this, it just amounts
to words, words. Words. We can post a link on
the on the Facebook page rights historians. I'll post a
(41:21):
link to that article. You guys can inform yourselves. And
that does it for me. I mean, unless you need
anything else from me. No, come back, hang out, let's go,
let's go, let's go hit the scene. And as we said,
our trustee co host Nol is out adventuring. But Christopher,
you mentioned that you're hoping he's just directly behind somebody.
(41:42):
Wait he should I turn? No, Hey, Nol, how's it going? Well?
Hey guys, Uh, it's it's me Nolum. I'm in Los Angeles,
in the in the in my hotel room in the
Hollywood Roosevelt, which apparently is where Marilyn Monroe died. Um,
I've been watching the Haunting of Hill House alone in
(42:02):
this creepy hotel by myself at night. I think I'm
still kind of on East Coast brain haven't quite made
the switch yet, so I've been feeling like I've been
seeing some apparitions hovering around this uh really boogie um
canopy bed that I'm that I'm in laying in right now,
in fact, podcasting till you find people. UM. I'm really
glad that Christopher was able to sit in and talk
(42:23):
about the Oxford English Dictionary. That's pretty cool. Um. Sorry
if I sound a little out of it, I've been
I've been working late nights and getting up early, and
as far as I'm concerned, I don't even know what
time it is right now. But godspeed, ridiculous historians to
you and yours and Christopher and Ben and I'll see
you on on the flip side if I return and
don't get murdered by ghosts in the night. And that's
(42:46):
it for today. Christopher, I hope that you make this
a habit. I hope you returned to shed some more
light on some of these strange stories of human civilization.
And I let you off easy this time, pal, but
next time I'd love to hear some more weird cover songs. Ben,
I can do it for you. Thanks Ben, Thanks Noel,
(43:08):
thanks Casey, you guys listening out there. Thanks for thanks
for having me, and we'll see you again next week
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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