Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm de Blean and Chocolate Boarding and I'm fired out
Speaker 1: And this podcast starts with a legend involving the first
Speaker 1: meeting of two men, James Murray, the primary editor of
Speaker 1: the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and one
Speaker 1: of his most prolific contributors, a Dr. W. C. Minor. So,
Speaker 1: unless you're really into dictionaries, the scenario probably doesn't interest
Speaker 1: you right off the bat until you learn that there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a mystery surrounding the situation. Don't tune
Speaker 1: out of the podcast, no, stay with us for just
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes. So, as the story goes, Murray
Speaker 1: and Minor have been working together for about twenty years,
Speaker 1: but they've never met. Minor had kept faithfully mailing Murray
Speaker 1: information on word origins and meanings that he picked up
Speaker 1: just in the course of his own reading and research.
Speaker 1: But even though Murray had invited him several times, Minor
Speaker 1: kept refusing to make the fifty mile trip from where
Speaker 1: he was living in the small English village of Crowthorne
Speaker 1: to Oxford, where Murray's dictionary headquarters were located. So Murray,
Speaker 1: I mean, he thinks this is a little strange, but
Speaker 1: he just thought Miner is probably a little eccentric or
Speaker 1: something like maybe a shut in or something. So, according
Speaker 1: to this legend in Murray finally decided, well, if this
Speaker 1: guy is not going to come to me, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to him and work on the dictionary was
Speaker 1: progressing well at this point. People who had had a
Speaker 1: hand in its creation were starting to receive honors, so
Speaker 1: Murray thought, I want to make sure Dr Miner gets
Speaker 1: recognized too, so he doesn't spring a surprise visit on
Speaker 1: him or anything. He telegraphs Dr Minor and says he's
Speaker 1: planning on visiting on the certain Wednesday in November and
Speaker 1: that he'll be taking a train that should arrive at
Speaker 1: Crowthorne station just after two o'clock. So Dr Miner wires
Speaker 1: him a response and says, basically that's I'll be expecting you.
Speaker 1: You'll be welcome here, And it seems like these two
Speaker 1: guys are finally gonna be able to meet. Everything seems
Speaker 1: fairly normal, um, and it really continues to seem that
Speaker 1: way even when Murray arrives on the appointed day, he
Speaker 1: shows up at the train station and there's a carriage
Speaker 1: waiting for him and it ushers him off to this
Speaker 1: huge brick mansion. Once he's inside, a servant shows up
Speaker 1: and attends him to the grand study, where there's this
Speaker 1: very important looking man standing behind a desk, and Murray
Speaker 1: bows and announces himself to him. He says, quote, a
Speaker 1: very good afternoon to you, sir. I am Dr James
Speaker 1: Murray of the London Philological Society and editor of the
Speaker 1: New English Dictionary. It is indeed an honor and a
Speaker 1: pleasure to it long last make your acquaintance, for you
Speaker 1: must be kind, sir, my most assiduous help meet Dr W. C. Minor.
Speaker 1: And there's kind of an awkward pause at this point,
Speaker 1: one one of those pauses where you feel like you
Speaker 1: can hear every sound in the room. And then the
Speaker 1: man responds, quote, I regret, kind, sir, I am not
Speaker 1: it is not as all as you suppose. I am,
Speaker 1: in fact, the superintendent of the broad More Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Speaker 1: Dr Minor is most certainly here, but he is an inmate.
Speaker 1: He has been a patient here for more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's like the beginning of a Wilkie Collins novel almost
Speaker 1: And like we said, this account, as originally reported in
Speaker 1: the Strand magazine in nineteen fifteen, is thought to be
Speaker 1: just a legend, but the two men who are involved,
Speaker 1: and the circumstances surrounding them, and the circumstances that would
Speaker 1: have put them in a situation like this, we're very real, indeed,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take a closer look at the
Speaker 1: relationship between these two men that we've talked about in
Speaker 1: part two of this podcast. But first we want to
Speaker 1: look into the more pressing question that this anecdote raises,
Speaker 1: which is why most people tell it when they start
Speaker 1: talking about Dr Minor, who was the stock or WC. Minor?
Speaker 1: What was he doing in a criminal lunatic asylum? And
Speaker 1: how did a crazy person essentially become such a major
Speaker 1: contributor to the highly respected Oxford English Section because seems
Speaker 1: the ultimate of methodical, level headed reference works, you can imagine.
Speaker 1: So this is going to be a tale of madness
Speaker 1: and murder and lexicography. But there's some war in here too,
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, this episode kind of ties into our
Speaker 1: Civil War series in a roundabout way. Yeah, Part one
Speaker 1: of it at least. But before we can get into
Speaker 1: any of that, first we need to start with the basics.
Speaker 1: Who was WC. Minor? So William Chester Miner was born
Speaker 1: in June of eighteen thirty four in Ceylon, which is
Speaker 1: now Sri Lanka, but he was descended from a long
Speaker 1: line of Connecticut aristocrats. His parents were missionaries. His father,
Speaker 1: Eastman Miner, was a devout Congregationalist, and his mother, Lucy,
Speaker 1: the two of them together had just moved to Salona
Speaker 1: year before William was born. He also had a sister
Speaker 1: whose name was also Lucy, who was born a couple
Speaker 1: of years after him. So the first really traumatic event
Speaker 1: in William Miner's life occurred when he was very very young,
Speaker 1: Just after his third birthday, his mother died of consumption,
Speaker 1: and his father remarried to another missionary named Judith Taylor
Speaker 1: a few years later and started a second family with her.
Speaker 1: But according to a BBC article on Minor, he was
Speaker 1: uh it kind of had a troubled childhood almost and
Speaker 1: was especially tormented during his boyhood with Lashiba's thoughts about
Speaker 1: local girls. Yeah, which doesn't seem that odd for a
Speaker 1: young boy, right, especially in his preteen years. But It's
Speaker 1: a point that may have significance later when we start
Speaker 1: talking about his insanity and how it manifested itself, So
Speaker 1: just kind of keep that in the back of your
Speaker 1: brain for now. At age fourteen, Miner's dad had him
Speaker 1: sent back to Connecticut and he sailed back to the
Speaker 1: United States by himself, and then he moved in with
Speaker 1: his uncle, Alfred, who was a store or in New Haven.
Speaker 1: And about ten years after that, Minor started school at Yale,
Speaker 1: where he specialized in comparative anatomy and earned a medical
Speaker 1: degree in February of eighteen sixty three. There's also kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting side note about his time at Yale, though,
Speaker 1: especially considering his later involvement with the Oxford English Dictionary.
Speaker 1: According to an article by Joshua Kendall in The Nation,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one, when Minor was a first year
Speaker 1: medical student at Yale, he signed a contract to write
Speaker 1: definitions for a new edition of Noah Webster's Dictionary, an
Speaker 1: American dictionary of the English language, and the agreement was
Speaker 1: that he'd be paid five hundred dollars to quote prepare
Speaker 1: the articles in the following departments Zoology, natural History, Geology, mineralogy, botany, chemistry, anatomy,
Speaker 1: surgery of all sorts, something like kind of a monumental undertaking,
Speaker 1: especially for a first year medical student, who's probably the
Speaker 1: other things. I would think so. But Minor got this
Speaker 1: job because James Dana, who was a professor at Yale
Speaker 1: Um and was originally supposed to write these selections or
Speaker 1: these sections of the New Dictionary, had to lighten up
Speaker 1: his workload a bit because he was experiencing a bout
Speaker 1: of depression. So Dana suggested kind of randomly, it seems
Speaker 1: a first year med student Minor to stand in for
Speaker 1: him and cover the sections, and Dana, being more experienced,
Speaker 1: would still supervise or at least review the completed work. Apparently,
Speaker 1: though he didn't supervise them that closely, because, according to
Speaker 1: Kendall's article, the sections Minor worked on contained many inaccuracies
Speaker 1: and inconsistencies. His work was publicly criticized, which must have
Speaker 1: been more defying for a young med student, especially by
Speaker 1: Samuel Stamon Haldeman of Delaware College, who later became one
Speaker 1: of the first presidents of the American Philological Association. He
Speaker 1: later wrote that quote accepting Professor danis part the natural
Speaker 1: history is the quote weakest part of the book burn Yeah, totally. Regardless,
Speaker 1: Minor had his first experience working on a dictionary under
Speaker 1: his belt, and his name was in that eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four edition of Websters. And of course he also had
Speaker 1: his medical degree too, And so after graduating from Yale,
Speaker 1: Minor joined the Union Army and his first posting was
Speaker 1: at the Night Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, and he
Speaker 1: was basically still training. They're still getting is his experience
Speaker 1: as a doctor. But the Civil War was going on,
Speaker 1: so a few months to a year after entering this
Speaker 1: first posting he ended up on the battlefront in Virginia,
Speaker 1: where he served as an assistant surgeon. Now, Minor wasn't
Speaker 1: really the best soldier you could imagine, he wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: cut out for the horrors of war. Most people describe
Speaker 1: him as being pretty sensitive, refined. He liked to read,
Speaker 1: he enjoyed painting watercolors, He played the flute, and so
Speaker 1: it's really unfortunate then considering the battle he ended up in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he ended up in the Battle of the Wilderness, which
Speaker 1: is described as a particularly bloody and horrific battle. I've
Speaker 1: seen it described as a Slaughterhouse. The battle lasted fifty hours,
Speaker 1: but it left twenty five thousand dead or wounded. It
Speaker 1: started when General grantsmen crossed the Rapidan River, and apparently
Speaker 1: the rifle fire was so thick it not only killed
Speaker 1: people but could cut off trees. It also started a
Speaker 1: fire in the underbrush, so that not only were men
Speaker 1: being killed and wounded by gunfire, they were also being
Speaker 1: burned to death. One soldier wrote later that it was
Speaker 1: like quote, Hell had itself usurped the place of Earth.
Speaker 1: And the key thing here as it relates to minor though,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the people participating in this
Speaker 1: battle where irishman who had come over to America to
Speaker 1: escape the famine and make a little money while they
Speaker 1: were at it. And these guys were able to get
Speaker 1: work as soldiers in the Union Army for thirteen dollars
Speaker 1: a month. But of course, during the war, and especially
Speaker 1: in situation like the Battle of the Wilderness, where trees
Speaker 1: are being chopped down by rifle fire, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of people who just figure thirteen dollars a
Speaker 1: month is not worth this and um dessert. So around
Speaker 1: this time the Union Army had a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were guilty of desertion or attempted desertion. But because
Speaker 1: they still needed soldiers, they had to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to dissuade others from deserting punish those who did
Speaker 1: without taking the standard punishment, which is execution. They needed
Speaker 1: the soldiers to keep on fighting, so there were a
Speaker 1: few possible solutions. Some guys were suspended by their thumbs,
Speaker 1: others were gagged with bayonets, and others were branded with
Speaker 1: the letter D on their cheeks or their cheek rather
Speaker 1: their asked or their rear end with a hot iron,
Speaker 1: or they kind of were tattooed, almost cut with a
Speaker 1: razor and then the wound would be packed with black powder,
Speaker 1: another form of branding. Ultimately, so on one occasion, or
Speaker 1: at least sources only refer to one specific occasion, Minor
Speaker 1: was forced to brand an Irish deserter who tried to
Speaker 1: run away from the Battle of the Wilderness. So you
Speaker 1: can kind of imagine what this must have been like
Speaker 1: for Minor. He was the young, inexperienced doctor being asked
Speaker 1: to perform this horrible task, and you know, an irishman
Speaker 1: was probably brought to him crying, struggling, pleading, and Minor
Speaker 1: has to take the hot branding iron and put it
Speaker 1: to the deserter's cheek and watch him probably scream in pain. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: most sources point to this as a defining moment for Minor,
Speaker 1: saying that it played a really big role in some
Speaker 1: of the strange, unusual things that started to happen in
Speaker 1: his life not too long after his war service. But
Speaker 1: after the war, Minor continued to serve in the army
Speaker 1: for several years. He did pretty well for himself. Actually,
Speaker 1: he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a commissioned captain,
Speaker 1: but during that time his behavior also started to become
Speaker 1: increasingly strange. When he was stationed on Governor's Island in
Speaker 1: New York, he started visiting Brothels a lot, and after
Speaker 1: that he was transferred to Florida, where his behavior started
Speaker 1: getting even more and more erratic and paranoid and sometimes
Speaker 1: even violent, and he began to think that his superiors
Speaker 1: were plotting something against him. So by eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear that Miner's mind was not well,
Speaker 1: and army doctors diagnosed him as having a monomania, or
Speaker 1: an obsession with one subject, which gives rise to delusions.
Speaker 1: They also said that he was suicidal and homicidal. So
Speaker 1: Miner went to the government Hospital for the insane in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Which later became Sat. Elizabeth's Hospital, and he
Speaker 1: actually volunteered for this. He volunteered to go and then
Speaker 1: after eight teen months in that facility, doctors decided that
Speaker 1: Minor was quote incapacitated by causes arising in the line
Speaker 1: of duty, so he was basically forced to retire from
Speaker 1: the army, but he did win a lifetime army commission,
Speaker 1: so he was going to be taken care of financially.
Speaker 1: So after being released from the army, Minor returned to
Speaker 1: Connecticut and spent a little bit of time with his family,
Speaker 1: but his family soon decided that England was the place
Speaker 1: for him to beat because they were really hoping that
Speaker 1: maybe if he went there, Minor could settle down a
Speaker 1: little bit, maybe start painting again, meet up with some
Speaker 1: talented people, start to earn his reputation back. So they
Speaker 1: packed him off with his paint and a letter of
Speaker 1: introduction to the art critic and drawing master John Ruskin,
Speaker 1: hoping that Ruskin would be some sort of entree to
Speaker 1: English Society for Minor somebody to introduce him to people
Speaker 1: who could help him start recovering, but for reasons that
Speaker 1: are still unclear, Minor didn't seem to even try to
Speaker 1: blend into respectable society. When he got to England at
Speaker 1: the end of eighteen seventy one, he settled in the
Speaker 1: Lambeth section of London, one of the lowest sedist, most
Speaker 1: crime ridden parts of the city. Some people think he
Speaker 1: might have moved there because he had easier access to
Speaker 1: prostitutes from this area, but we're not sure, so we
Speaker 1: don't know much about his time there, but it seems
Speaker 1: that his delusions just continued to get worse. He thought
Speaker 1: people Irishman in particular, were trying to break into his
Speaker 1: room at night. It seems like that vision of the
Speaker 1: branded Irishman, his experience with that was kind of coming
Speaker 1: back to haunt him at this point. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to an account kept by the Berkshire Record Office,
Speaker 1: Minor made a report to Scotland Yard shortly before Christmas,
Speaker 1: saying that he thought men were trying to force their
Speaker 1: way into his room at night to poison him. He
Speaker 1: believed these men to be Irish, and Scotland Yard just
Speaker 1: dismissed him as a crazy man, didn't follow up on it,
Speaker 1: didn't do anything about it. Then, on February eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: a constable was patrolling the Lambeth area and heard several
Speaker 1: shots rang out at about two am. He rushed off
Speaker 1: in the direction the shots came from, blowing his whistle
Speaker 1: on the way to alert other constables in the area
Speaker 1: to to come in and support him. And who should
Speaker 1: he find holding the gun but William Chester Minor. Yes,
Speaker 1: Minor had shot and killed a man named George Merritt,
Speaker 1: a working man who was innocently on his way to
Speaker 1: work at a brewery, a man who Miner had never met.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna leave you with that cliffhanger for this
Speaker 1: part one of the William Chester Minor Podcast. But next
Speaker 1: time we're going to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: motive behind Miner's crime, his trial, and where he ends
Speaker 1: up after that as his illness continues to progress, and
Speaker 1: of course how he gets involved in the creation of
Speaker 1: the first Oxford English Dictionary Becase Because of course, in
Speaker 1: case you've forgotten, this is a story about that too.
Speaker 1: The Dictionary pod cast. I'm sure most people have kind
Speaker 1: of forgotten by now all of the insanity and murder
Speaker 1: and civil war action going on, And you thought dictionaries
Speaker 1: had to be boring, not at all. So I guess
Speaker 1: that's a good time to transition to a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: It is. We have a letter here from Lindsay and Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and um, I wanted to read this because it relates
Speaker 1: to the theme of Civil War doctors. Yes, she says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Saranda Blena. I know you enjoy hearing what listeners are
Speaker 1: doing while they listened to the podcast, so I thought
Speaker 1: i'd share what I was doing while I listened to
Speaker 1: your podcast on Dr McGuire and Stonewall Jackson. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: I was listening to the podcast while cataloging a book
Speaker 1: of Civil War songs called Singing Soldiers, Spirit of the
Speaker 1: Sixties and History of the Civil War and Song. One
Speaker 1: of the songs in the book is entitled Stonewall's Requiem, which,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, was written in eighteen sixty three
Speaker 1: about Stonewall Jackson's death. I'll share the lyrics with you,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of lyrics here, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to read them all, but I'll just read
Speaker 1: the first one out. It says, the muffled drum is beating.
Speaker 1: There's a sad and solemn tread. Our banners draped in mourning,
Speaker 1: as at shrouds the illustrious dead, proud forms are bent
Speaker 1: with sorrow, and all Southern hearts are sore. The hero
Speaker 1: now is sleeping, Noble Stonewall is no more. So that
Speaker 1: was actually the first two verses, but thank you Lindsay
Speaker 1: for sending that in. That is quite the coincidence that
Speaker 1: you were cataloging that acast. Yeah, those are always fun.
Speaker 1: So if you have any of those who want to
Speaker 1: share with us, please write us. We're a history podcast
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com or you can look
Speaker 1: us up on Facebook or we're on Twitter at this
Speaker 1: in History. And if you want to try to figure
Speaker 1: out where this podcast Part one is going for you
Speaker 1: even here part two, you can check out an article
Speaker 1: we have on our website called what Makes the Killer.
Speaker 1: Find it by searching for what Makes the Killer at
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