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Speaker 1: Street Stuff. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to
Speaker 1: bling a choker boarding and and with this episode, we're
Speaker 1: continuing on with our look into the life of William
Speaker 1: Chester Miner, an American man who became one of the
Speaker 1: most prolific contributors to the first edition of the Oxford
Speaker 1: English Dictionary, but from what we've seen of his life
Speaker 1: so far, he doesn't really seem to be headed in
Speaker 1: that direction at all. In Part one of this podcast,
Speaker 1: we took a look at Miner's early life, how he
Speaker 1: came from an aristocratic family, he got a good education,
Speaker 1: he studied medicine at Yale and joined the Union Army
Speaker 1: as an assistant surgeon during the Civil War, and his
Speaker 1: life and career at that point seemed really full of promise.
Speaker 1: But his mental health went downhill after the war, and
Speaker 1: we talked about how that downward spiral may have been
Speaker 1: triggered by an incident during the Battle of the Wilderness
Speaker 1: in which he was forced to brand an Irish deserter
Speaker 1: on the cheek. After spending about eighteen months in a
Speaker 1: hospital for the insane in d c, Minor decided to
Speaker 1: have cross the Pond to England, where he could hopefully rest,
Speaker 1: paint kind of calm his thoughts a bit, maybe earned
Speaker 1: back his reputation by connecting with the right people in London.
Speaker 1: But when we last saw Minor he had done nothing
Speaker 1: like that. No, it didn't go down that way at all.
Speaker 1: He had gotten off on the wrong foot by taking
Speaker 1: up residents in Lambeth, which was one of the seediest
Speaker 1: parts of London. And when we left off with part
Speaker 1: one of this story, he had just killed a man
Speaker 1: who he had never laid eyes on before. So we're
Speaker 1: going to pick up at that crime February eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: just as the constables were reaching the scene finding Minor
Speaker 1: standing there gun in hand. And we should mention before
Speaker 1: we get too far into this that one of the
Speaker 1: sources of information in this podcast is Simon Winchester's book
Speaker 1: The Professor and the Madman. One of our listeners actually
Speaker 1: mentioned on Facebook, so it reminded me that I need
Speaker 1: to bring it up and talk about a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's a really fascinating book. It takes a really in
Speaker 1: depth look at Minor, story of the other characters, prinitive
Speaker 1: work on his life. Yeah, it is a lot of
Speaker 1: articles about Minor used this as a source too, so
Speaker 1: even the other sources we used probably pulled from that
Speaker 1: to some extent. So moving on with the story. Though,
Speaker 1: the man that Minor had shot was bleeding all over
Speaker 1: the street. Two constables tried to get him to a
Speaker 1: nearby hospital, but it was too late. They identified the
Speaker 1: dead man as George Merritt, who had been a stoker
Speaker 1: at the Red Lion Brewery, which was something of a
Speaker 1: landmark in the area, even though the area wasn't that great,
Speaker 1: and he had been there for eight years, which meant
Speaker 1: that he pretty much he being a stokermant that he
Speaker 1: kept the fires over which the beer was made burning. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously that wasn't a glamorous job. This guy brought home
Speaker 1: twenty four shillings a week, which wasn't a lot even
Speaker 1: back then. He was very poor, and he also had
Speaker 1: a wife and six kids and one more baby on
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, so a lot of family relying on him.
Speaker 1: He was about thirty four years old and he did
Speaker 1: live in the area and when he ran into Minor,
Speaker 1: he had been on his way to work at the
Speaker 1: dawn shift to the brewery. So it's about two am
Speaker 1: heading out, runs into this guy on the street who
Speaker 1: ends up shooting him. So meanwhile, the constable who apprehended Miner,
Speaker 1: who was Constable Tarrant, had what was sort of a
Speaker 1: strange exchange with the suspect. He asked him, whom did
Speaker 1: you fire at? And Miner who Tarrant described as really
Speaker 1: cool and collected. Gave this bizarre response. He said, it
Speaker 1: was a man. You do not suppose I would be
Speaker 1: so cowardly as to shoot a woman. So not really
Speaker 1: the response he was probably expecting to get out of him. Um.
Speaker 1: Tarrant proceeded to take Minor down to the Tower Street
Speaker 1: police station. Asked some questions on the way, though, Miners
Speaker 1: started to say that the whole thing was an accident.
Speaker 1: Started to give a little more reason, maybe more of
Speaker 1: what Tarrant had been expecting in the first place. He
Speaker 1: was just saying he had shot the wrong man. He
Speaker 1: had been trying to defend himself from somebody broken into
Speaker 1: his room and he had made a mistake. He was
Speaker 1: also saying a lot of other weird stuff on the
Speaker 1: way to the police station two, so you could see
Speaker 1: how maybe the constable wouldn't quite believe him. He was
Speaker 1: asking the constable to search him. He was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I have another gun? And the constable was like, well,
Speaker 1: please keep it in your pocket if you have another gun.
Speaker 1: I mean. It's really kind of an odd sort of
Speaker 1: interaction that they had. But when they got to the station,
Speaker 1: Miner was formally arrested and charged with murder. Because he
Speaker 1: was American, the U S. Minister in London had to
Speaker 1: be notified in the crime, which became known as the
Speaker 1: Lambeth tragedy, became an international incident, and Minor was thirty
Speaker 1: seven years old at this time. Just to give you
Speaker 1: kind of a reference point, Okay, So at this point
Speaker 1: Miner got put into the horsemonger Land jail and Scotland
Speaker 1: Yard got put on the case. So Minor himself wasn't
Speaker 1: really much of a help. I mean, this is no surprise.
Speaker 1: He wasn't much of a help with the investigation. He
Speaker 1: just continued to say, over and over it was an accident,
Speaker 1: you know, I I shot the wrong man. But when
Speaker 1: the trial started in early April, details about minors strange
Speaker 1: life started to surface through the help of various witnesses.
Speaker 1: His Lambeth landlady, for instance, came forward, Mrs Fisher, and
Speaker 1: she said that while he was a very good tenant,
Speaker 1: he was kind of a strange fellow. He was anxious.
Speaker 1: He had often demand to have the furniture in his
Speaker 1: room moved around and rearranged, and he was really really
Speaker 1: afraid that people might break into his place. In particular,
Speaker 1: she said that he was very afraid of the Irish.
Speaker 1: He would always ask if she had any Irish servants
Speaker 1: working in the house or if there were any Irish
Speaker 1: lodger staying there. In part one of this podcast, we
Speaker 1: mentioned Miner's delusions about irishman breaking into his room at
Speaker 1: night and how it was probably related to that branding
Speaker 1: incident during the Civil War when he had to brand
Speaker 1: the Irish desert or on the cheek, and we talked
Speaker 1: about how he'd already contacted Scotland Yard about this. During
Speaker 1: the trial, a Scotland Yard detective named Williamson, in fact
Speaker 1: came forward and testified that Miner had come to him
Speaker 1: three months earlier, complaining that men were trying to come
Speaker 1: into his room at night and poison him. Specifically, Minor
Speaker 1: believed the intruders were members of the Finnian Brotherhood, militant
Speaker 1: Irish nationalists, and he thought they were planning on murdering
Speaker 1: him and making it look like a suicide. And other people,
Speaker 1: you know, people who had met Minor and spoken to
Speaker 1: him before, did have a suspicion that something was off
Speaker 1: with him. Williamson, the guy who Minor went to, wrote
Speaker 1: in his notes from that time that Miner was clearly insane,
Speaker 1: but there was another aspect to Minor's delusions as well.
Speaker 1: Another man who testified at the trial was William Dennis,
Speaker 1: and he was an employee at London's Bethlehem Hospital for
Speaker 1: the Insane. We've talked about maybe doing a podcast on
Speaker 1: on that at some point, but his job was to
Speaker 1: watch Minor at night when he was in jail, and
Speaker 1: Dennis said that every morning when Minor would wake up,
Speaker 1: he would accuse Dennis of having been paid to moless
Speaker 1: Minor during the night while he was asleep, and minor
Speaker 1: step brother George Minor would later confirm these delusions about
Speaker 1: sexual abuty thing that for the time that Minor was
Speaker 1: home before he left for England, he would often accuse
Speaker 1: people of trying to break into his room and molest
Speaker 1: him at night. So it wasn't just the spear of
Speaker 1: somebody breaking in or the Irish trying to get him.
Speaker 1: There was this whole other aspect to it. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: sexual aspect of his delusions, and I think that's why
Speaker 1: some people relate sort of his mental illness, or maybe
Speaker 1: relate the beginning of his mental illness to um the
Speaker 1: lascivious thoughts that we mentioned in the first part of
Speaker 1: this podcast that he used to have about girls in
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka when he was growing up, that maybe that
Speaker 1: was an exactly maybe that was an early indication of
Speaker 1: mental illness, I should say so. Minor himself pretty much
Speaker 1: confirmed this aspect of his delusions when he was interrogated
Speaker 1: to he testified that on the night that he killed
Speaker 1: George Merritt, he woke up suddenly and saw a man
Speaker 1: standing at the foot of his bed. So he reached
Speaker 1: for his cult service revolver, which he kept under his
Speaker 1: pillow while he slept, And he said that and saw
Speaker 1: him reach for his gun and then took off and
Speaker 1: ran down the stairs and out of the house. Minor
Speaker 1: followed him and then saw a man running down the street,
Speaker 1: thought it was the intruder, fired four times and shot him.
Speaker 1: That's his side of the story anyways, really our poor
Speaker 1: brewery employee. But the final decision in the case was
Speaker 1: determined by the McNaughton rules, which were named for somebody
Speaker 1: who had shot a man and was acquitted on the
Speaker 1: grounds of being insane, and the jury in Miner's case
Speaker 1: determined that he was also of unfound mind when he
Speaker 1: had committed the crime, so the ruling was not guilty
Speaker 1: on the grounds of insanity, and the judge told him,
Speaker 1: quote you will be detained in safe custody, doctor Minor,
Speaker 1: until her Majesty's pleasure be known. So we already know
Speaker 1: where Minor was sent from the story at the beginning
Speaker 1: of our first episode. The detention was set to take
Speaker 1: place at Broadmoor Asylum for the criminally Insane, in the
Speaker 1: village of Crowthorne in the County of Berkshire, and he
Speaker 1: was known there officially as File number seven four to
Speaker 1: two and was expected to spend the rest of his
Speaker 1: life there as a quote certified criminal lunatic. But we
Speaker 1: need to describe what his life really was. There was
Speaker 1: more than just being a number and a quote certified
Speaker 1: criminal lunatic. Yeah, it's it was better than you might expect.
Speaker 1: He got to broad Moore on April seventeen, eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and according to that account kept by the Berkshire Record
Speaker 1: Office that we mentioned in the first part of the podcast,
Speaker 1: he was described at the time as a thin, pale
Speaker 1: and sharp featured man with light colored sandy hair, deep
Speaker 1: set eyes, and prominent cheekbones. He was considered to be
Speaker 1: low risk, so he ended up in cell Block two,
Speaker 1: which was known unofficially I guess as the Swell Block.
Speaker 1: It was like that Swell block cell block. It was
Speaker 1: the lowest security cell block and it's where prisoners had
Speaker 1: the most privileges. And since Minor was well educated and
Speaker 1: a well to do you American, he got special treatment there,
Speaker 1: special freedoms and comforts that a lot of inmates probably
Speaker 1: didn't get. Almost as soon as he got there, the
Speaker 1: American consulate in London, for example, made sure that Minor
Speaker 1: was reunited with his possessions, including his own clothes, his
Speaker 1: art materials, and his diary. They didn't send him with
Speaker 1: his surgical instruments though they catch those. Don't send a
Speaker 1: venture of scalpels over to the guy in the sant asylum.
Speaker 1: But he also had some money coming in. He had
Speaker 1: a regular allowance from his family, which gave him the
Speaker 1: ability to buy stuff or have the hospital purchase things
Speaker 1: on his behalf. And that made his food a lot better.
Speaker 1: You know, he'd have poultry and gain steak, biscuits, coffee,
Speaker 1: sometimes even wine and spirits. But it also allowed him
Speaker 1: to keep his mind occupied. This was an intellectual man,
Speaker 1: and he was able to purchase newspapers, engineering papers. He
Speaker 1: might have used those to get some tips on this
Speaker 1: dirty building construction, because he was, of course still extremely
Speaker 1: troubled by these delusions of people breaking into his room
Speaker 1: at night. Um at one point he supposedly even had
Speaker 1: his bedroom floors covered with zinc to keep the demons
Speaker 1: from coming up through the floorboards while he was asleep.
Speaker 1: He would also get a lot of books, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that a little bit more in
Speaker 1: a second, but many of these books he would have
Speaker 1: shipped from New Haven, Connecticut, or ordered from shops in London,
Speaker 1: and at some point during his stay there, probably pretty
Speaker 1: early on, from what we can tell, Minor was also
Speaker 1: given access to two cells a separate day room in
Speaker 1: addition to his bedroom, and he converted that day room
Speaker 1: into a kind of library lined with bookshelves. So overall
Speaker 1: he had this pretty comfortable existence at Broadmore, considering the circumstances,
Speaker 1: and he received visits from family and friends, and he
Speaker 1: had occasionally dine in the superintendent's home. According to Winchester's book,
Speaker 1: he even received visits from Eliza Merritt, who is none
Speaker 1: other than the widow of the man he'd shot. She'd
Speaker 1: supposedly forgiven him after minor Or settled some money on
Speaker 1: her and her children, but whether or not this actually
Speaker 1: happened is still up for debate. So Minor might have
Speaker 1: just been in this situation with his two cells, all
Speaker 1: of his books, his newspapers, engineering papers, spent the rest
Speaker 1: of his days. They're unknown, But one day around the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen eighty, while he was reading some of
Speaker 1: that material, he came across this sort of press release
Speaker 1: and it was called an appeal to readers, and it
Speaker 1: was in a book that he'd ordered from a library
Speaker 1: in London. So it was basically this request for English
Speaker 1: speaking volunteer readers around the world to help out with
Speaker 1: a massive publication project that was going on at Oxford University,
Speaker 1: which at the time was going to be called the
Speaker 1: New English Dictionary, and it was intended to be the biggest,
Speaker 1: most thorough collection of English words yet so they needed,
Speaker 1: through soliciting, some help for their new dictionary they were writing.
Speaker 1: So it seems my Er immediately realized that he was
Speaker 1: kind of in the perfect position to contribute here, seeing
Speaker 1: as how he had tons of time on his hands,
Speaker 1: to read, and he could get new books pretty much
Speaker 1: whenever he wanted. So he wrote to James Murray, who
Speaker 1: had taken over as editor of the Dictionary project in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine, and he's the one who had drafted
Speaker 1: that press release we just mentioned, and asked if he
Speaker 1: could help out. And as we mentioned in part one
Speaker 1: to this podcast, James Murray ended up being the Oxford
Speaker 1: English Dictionaries editor for forty years and was also its
Speaker 1: greatest and most famous editor. He's a really interesting character
Speaker 1: and probably deserves a podcast in his own right. Though
Speaker 1: he was around miners age, very intelligent and he loved learning,
Speaker 1: but he came from a poor family and had to
Speaker 1: quit school at fourteen, so he was basically self taught,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty amazing considering all he accomplished.
Speaker 1: And I mean by self taught, you mean he knew
Speaker 1: lots of languages and astronomy, not just like he was
Speaker 1: an informed man. Yes, exactly. He was very highly regarded
Speaker 1: for his knowledge. But of course we're focusing on minor
Speaker 1: story here, so we'll just tell a little bit about
Speaker 1: the Dictionary so you'll understand exactly how Minor was helping
Speaker 1: out from his cell in broadmore so. This Grand Dictionary
Speaker 1: project actually started in eighteen fifty seven with three members
Speaker 1: of London's Philological Society, Richard Trench, Herbert Coleridge and Frederick Fernival,
Speaker 1: who saw some serious deficiencies in the dictionaries that have
Speaker 1: been published so far, including those by Webster, which we
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit in the previous podcast. Samuel
Speaker 1: Johnson and Charles Richardson. They had two main problems with
Speaker 1: these existing dictionaries. On one hand, they didn't think that
Speaker 1: they were comprehensive enough. For example, some just included very
Speaker 1: difficult words, so word if you would need to look
Speaker 1: up in the dictionary exactly, and they felt a dictionary
Speaker 1: should really include every word in the English language. They
Speaker 1: also felt that every word, along with a definition, should
Speaker 1: have an authoritative etymology, So quotations from literary passages that
Speaker 1: would illustrate every meaning of every single word include ing.
Speaker 1: And this was a key point. One meaning one quotation
Speaker 1: I should say that illustrated the words earliest known usage
Speaker 1: in English. I try to wrap your mind around that
Speaker 1: for a minute. I mean, I think that's important before
Speaker 1: we go on, imagine trying to find that earliest usage
Speaker 1: through every book printed in English and not have any
Speaker 1: sort of search engine capabilities. Of course, real people would
Speaker 1: have to go through these books reading and looking for
Speaker 1: the words. So of course, since there will be a
Speaker 1: lot of words included, and each word might need the
Speaker 1: support of several quotations, there was no practical way that
Speaker 1: a dictionary staff could handle all of that on their own.
Speaker 1: So the plan was to involve these unpaid volunteer readers,
Speaker 1: enthusiastic readers, I guess, from all over the English speaking world.
Speaker 1: And that was the announcement that Minor saw in the
Speaker 1: paper for the book. So in that article in the
Speaker 1: Nation by Joshua Kendall that we referenced in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: he compares it to quote what we now know of
Speaker 1: as the wiki model of creating and disseminating knowledge, which
Speaker 1: I think is a really cool way to think about it.
Speaker 1: It makes it all makes sense when you think about
Speaker 1: it like that. We do have this modern way to
Speaker 1: look to look at it, to compare it something, to
Speaker 1: compare it to yeah, wiki without the Internet exactly. So,
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons, real work on the dictionary
Speaker 1: didn't get going until Murray came on board in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, and even then it was really slow going.
Speaker 1: For example, it took until eighteen eighty four to publish
Speaker 1: the first volume, which was a to aunt, so very slow,
Speaker 1: very slow going. But still this wiki model of um
Speaker 1: collecting illustrative quotations was pretty successful. You know, they were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of real work done, and they ended
Speaker 1: up getting millions of contributions from volunteers in England, Ireland,
Speaker 1: Scotland and the United States, people who would send in
Speaker 1: quotations from books and magazines and newspapers, and like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, they were trying to go for the earliest
Speaker 1: known youth. Some of these went back as far as
Speaker 1: the ninth century. And it was to this aspect of
Speaker 1: the dictionary that Minor was contributing. So he didn't really
Speaker 1: do any defining like he had done for Websters. But
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned several times, he did become one of
Speaker 1: Murray's best contributors. He'd send in these small cards with
Speaker 1: quotations on them. By the thousand and eventually more. His
Speaker 1: personal library contained a lot of rare sixteenth and seventeenth
Speaker 1: century books in particular, and he'd searched through these for
Speaker 1: appropriate quotes and he even went a step further and
Speaker 1: would sometimes ask the O E ed editors what word
Speaker 1: they were working on, and then find quotes to go
Speaker 1: with those specific words. And I mean, just thinking about
Speaker 1: that makes my head hurt. That you would get a list,
Speaker 1: maybe a short list, of a few words they were
Speaker 1: working on, and then go look through your entire library
Speaker 1: for that word. I just I can't imagine. So in eighteen,
Speaker 1: Ury said that Minor had sent in quote No. Less
Speaker 1: than twelve thousand quotes and added quote so enormous have
Speaker 1: been Dr Miner's contributions during the past seventeen or eighteen
Speaker 1: years that we could easily illustrate the last four centuries
Speaker 1: from his quotations alone. So it's no wonder that Murray
Speaker 1: really wanted to meet Minor along the way, this guy
Speaker 1: who was contributing so much to the dictionary. But their
Speaker 1: first meeting probably didn't take place quite like that dramatic
Speaker 1: legend that I think I've compared it to Wilkie Collins.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a Wilkie Collins set up um that
Speaker 1: we related at the beginning of part one of this
Speaker 1: podcast um, the one that was published in The Strand
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen. That sensationalized account has the two meeting
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven after Minor failed to attend the
Speaker 1: Great Dictionary Dinner, which sounds fun, thrown at Queen's College
Speaker 1: in Murray's honor to celebrate the dictionaries progress. And according
Speaker 1: to that ledge, and this was the first time Murray
Speaker 1: realized that his favorite contributor was actually an inmate in
Speaker 1: a mental asylum. But Winchester's research kind of turned up
Speaker 1: something different. Yeah. Both through his research and the discovery
Speaker 1: of a letter written by Dr Murray and the Broadmore archives,
Speaker 1: we can see that Murray, though we might have thought
Speaker 1: that Minor was just a retired doctor or doctor in
Speaker 1: the asylum at first, he probably was clued into Minor's
Speaker 1: actual situation by the late eighteen eighties and probably visited
Speaker 1: him as soon as eighteen ninety one rather than eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Murray was always really sensitive to minor situation,
Speaker 1: though apparently never letting him know that he knew that
Speaker 1: Minor was mentally ill, so the to form this kind
Speaker 1: of friendship that went beyond their working relationship. Murray even
Speaker 1: visited Minor on several occasions, though it's unclear according to
Speaker 1: the Broadmore records exactly how often that occurred. Murray would
Speaker 1: supposedly telegraph ahead, however, to find out what Miner's exact
Speaker 1: mood was before visiting, and he would avoid coming if
Speaker 1: Minor was especially angry at the time. But when he
Speaker 1: did visit, they have these very cozy experience is kind
Speaker 1: of like two well respected colleagues hanging out together. Mury
Speaker 1: and Minor would sit in minors day room and have
Speaker 1: some tea and have some cake in front of the fire,
Speaker 1: just like it was a normal kind of situation, just
Speaker 1: catching up friends hanging out. So you'd think that maybe
Speaker 1: this friendship and having a purpose in the form of
Speaker 1: his dictionary work would have been really good for Minor's
Speaker 1: mental state, but his paranoid delusions just continued to get worse.
Speaker 1: He'd think that he was being drugged at night with chloroform,
Speaker 1: or tortured with electricity, or kidnapped from the asylum at
Speaker 1: night to be abused, so that nightly sexual abuse was
Speaker 1: still a big part of it, and he'd even tried
Speaker 1: to barricade his room at night to protect himself and
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, on December third,
Speaker 1: nineteen o two. To be exact, he experienced a major
Speaker 1: setback that morning. He actually mutilated his own genitals, and
Speaker 1: it seemed to be a desperate attempt to kind of
Speaker 1: put a stop to the indecent acts that he thought
Speaker 1: he was being forced to do every night. When asked
Speaker 1: why he did it, he said he did it quote
Speaker 1: an interests of morality. So after that he was kept
Speaker 1: in the infirmary for four months and then sent back
Speaker 1: to his rooms. But the delusions just persisted, and as
Speaker 1: the years went by, he continued to get worse mentally
Speaker 1: and work less and less, and also his health started
Speaker 1: to decline. So a lot of people, including Murray, began
Speaker 1: to petition for his release to his family, and at
Speaker 1: first these petitions were denied, but the government finally relented
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten and then granted Miners release and ordered
Speaker 1: that he be deported back to the States. So Murray,
Speaker 1: who had by that time been knighted for his work
Speaker 1: in the Dictionary, and his wife visited Miner one last
Speaker 1: time right before Miner left the country on April fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, and he brought along a court photographer to
Speaker 1: document this last his final meeting between two friends and
Speaker 1: two really influential contributors to what was going to be
Speaker 1: a famous dictionary. Murray was accompanied back to the States
Speaker 1: on a steamer by his brother Alfred, but it was
Speaker 1: really a long time before he actually made it home
Speaker 1: to Connecticut. He he immediately went back to that hospital
Speaker 1: for the Insane in d C. That he was at previously,
Speaker 1: which is now Sat Elizabeth's, and he spent almost ten
Speaker 1: years there, kind of in the same way that he
Speaker 1: had lived at Broadmore as a privileged in may who
Speaker 1: still had nightly outbursts. So his problems kind of continued
Speaker 1: to progress, and in between he would sort of spend
Speaker 1: his day's reading and painting and doing, you know, his
Speaker 1: activities that he enjoyed, but still in ill health. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen nineteen though, he was finally allowed to
Speaker 1: go back to Connecticut to be near his family, and
Speaker 1: he died there March nineteen twenty um, you know, having
Speaker 1: been in prison the majority of his life by that point,
Speaker 1: or the hospital rather so, even though he lived the
Speaker 1: life of anonymity while he was locked away for so
Speaker 1: many years, his name is still pretty well known. It's
Speaker 1: still in the preface to the Oxford English Dictionary in fact, yeah,
Speaker 1: which ultimately that dictionary took seventy years to complete. It
Speaker 1: was completed in nineteen eight, which was a decade after
Speaker 1: Murray's death. And I think I found I saw this
Speaker 1: in that Nation article that we mentioned, give us some status,
Speaker 1: some stats to kind of boggle the mind. In the end,
Speaker 1: the first edition, not including the supplements that were published after,
Speaker 1: but that first edition, published in nineteen had four hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen thousand, eight hundred twenty five headwords, so to speak,
Speaker 1: defined by one million, eight hundred twenty seven thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred and six illustrative quotations over fifteen thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: ninety pages. Pretty incredible, very incredible, And it sounds like
Speaker 1: Minor was a pretty significant part of all of that.
Speaker 1: So in recent years consequently, more people have taken an
Speaker 1: interest in his life. And of course there's Winchester's book
Speaker 1: that you mentioned in the beginning, and there's maybe even
Speaker 1: gonna be a movie. Do you have any more info
Speaker 1: on that. I don't have any more info on that.
Speaker 1: When you look it up, it just says that the
Speaker 1: movie The Professor and the Madman is in development. Apparently
Speaker 1: mel Gibson bought the rights to the movie in nine
Speaker 1: and they've gone through a couple of different directors I think,
Speaker 1: and they're working on it, but I don't know when
Speaker 1: it's supposed to come out, but I think that'll be
Speaker 1: an interesting one to see when it does. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like it would be a fantastic movie. Actually, I'm
Speaker 1: imagining the how you dramatize the dictionary writing scenes though,
Speaker 1: sort of like computer movies, they have to have scenes
Speaker 1: of like rapid typing, maybe page flipping through country book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll have to really make looking upwards interesting. But I
Speaker 1: guess hopefully we'll get to see that down the road.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned, somebody did bring up this book
Speaker 1: on Facebook, so we wouldn't just throw it out there
Speaker 1: again like we always do. If you guys have read
Speaker 1: any cool historical books or have any other ideas that
Speaker 1: you want us to podcast develop, please write us Where
Speaker 1: History Podcast at how Stuffworks dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: look us up on Facebook, of course, or at Twitter
Speaker 1: at mist in History. So I think I'm gonna head
Speaker 1: off and start maybe planning a great dictionary dinner because
Speaker 1: that sounds truly, it just sounds good. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want to do the dictionary research. But you want to
Speaker 1: have a dictionary dinner. I think everybody could come as
Speaker 1: a word never know. That would be fun. Oh I
Speaker 1: like that? All right, I'll invite you to Blina. So
Speaker 1: if you're not going to go plan your own dictionary party,
Speaker 1: we do have an article written by Molly Edmonds called
Speaker 1: how Can You Tell if You're Mentally Ill? And you
Speaker 1: can find it by searching for that title on our
Speaker 1: homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com