BOOK REVIEW:

The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester, 1998. It is not only an interesting account of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but carries with it the story of George Merrett’s accidental murder on February 17, 1872, by William Chester Minor in Victorian London’s crime-ridden Lambeth Marsh. Minor was sentenced to life, and after his interment in April 1872, was known as Broadmoor File Number 742.

Why Minor murdered Merrett is covered in Winchester’s exploration of Minor’s history as a child born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and later as a US Army surgeon during the Civil War. Minor’s brief time spent at the Wilderness Battle in Virginia during General Grant’s attempt to crush the Confederate forces of Robert E. Lee in Northern Virginia didn’t go so well, and while it may have tipped the scales of Minor’s descent from sanity, there is some reason to question the events of his earlier life.

James Augustus Henry Murray, the second primary figure in the OED’s origin, was born in 1837, Harwick, Scotland, a Teviot River valley town; and left school at 14 as did most poor children of the British Isles. Precocious, with a love of reading, an interest in just about everything, and more than just a flair for languages, by 15 he had a working knowledge of French, Italian, German, and Greek.

James married Maggie Scott when he was 24. Two years later Anna was born, but died in fancy. When Maggie got ill shortly after Anna’s death, the couple was forced by economic circumstances to move to move to Peckham (near London) where Murray worked for the Chartered Bank of India. It looked like the end of his intellectual pursuit, however, two years later married Ada Ruthven, far more his social and intellectual equal, a point from which he rose to be known worldwide as one of its greatest philologists.

While other dictionaries had been conceived and printed, none attempted the scope of OED. Winchester writes well of its conception, the problems associated with development, financing, and eventual printing of the current 20 volume tome.

Just how did Murray and Minor meet in 1880? There are two versions of the story, one more romantic than realistic. Both are told.

Minor’s condition declined as he aged. In 1910, Winston Churchill sighed for his discharge from Broadmoor, and return to the United States for continued confinement at St. Elizabeth’s Federal Hospital in Washington, DC, (Then known only as the Government Hospital for the Insane).
James Murray passed away on July 26, 1915, before the completion of the OED. In 1919, William Minor was transferred to hospital for the elderly insane in Hartford, CT, known as The Retreat. He passed away on March 26, 1920.