OED #3: The Madman

Simon Winchester describes the rules for the volunteers for Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in The Professor and the Madman. They had to pick one from the list of the pre-defined periods (decided by the Oxford team); then read books from that period; make a list of every single word they ran into; and capture the title/ edition/ page and exact sentence in which the word was found.

 

Not surprisingly, the estimated project completion time was wrong by decades! Some volunteers were slow; others misunderstood the instructions; many forgot even the simple word had to be captured. On the other side, the curators at Oxford found themselves drowning in the volume of inputs coming in.

 

One of those volunteers was the “madman”, Dr W.C. Minor. He was an American surgeon. He enlisted in the army during the American Civil War. Not only did he see gruesome things, he was also part of at least one horrific act. Since men often deserted the army, examples had to be made. A common punishment was to brand the deserter on his cheek, and Dr Minor was told to do just that to an Irish deserter. The incident was etched in his memory. Mental illness ran in his family; and a few years later, he began to show signs of mental illness himself. Hence he was discharged from the army, but his army pension was continued. He then came away to England. One night, during a delusional episode, he took his pistol and shot to death someone imagining him to be an Irishman out to harm him. Dr Minor was tried, found insane, and sent to the mental asylum.

 

But Dr Minor hadn’t lost his mind completely. During the day, he was in his senses and could function more or less normally. When he heard of the OED project, he requested the asylum governor to let him enrol. Since Dr Minor wasn’t violent, and the project would keep him occupied, the governor agreed. Even better, from Oxford’s point of view, Dr Minor bought the books in question using his army pension (Oxford didn’t have to pay for the books of this volunteer).

 

Dr Minor was extremely meticulous, very organized, very diligent. He collected all the information that was asked for. He would even respond to specific word requests for help from Oxford. Sure, there would be periods when his episodes would occur, and his contributions would stop at such times. But this was no different from the pattern of the other volunteers – after all, such things were expected from volunteers. But overall, Minor’s contributions were immense, and the quality of his inputs excellent, and Oxford was very happy and grateful to have such a volunteer chipping in.

 

Which is why Dr Murray at OED was so keen to meet such a key contributor. Which is why he decided to come and meet Dr Minor. If that meeting described in the first blog in the series sounded too movie-like to be true, the author agrees it probably wasn’t true. But it sure made for a great story – which is why it got lapped up both in the US and England and has been repeated endlessly.