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