The professor and the madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary by Simon Winchester

Author:Simon Winchester [Winchester, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Literary, Literary Criticism, History, Historical, Reference, United States, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Linguistics, Language Arts & Disciplines, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Dictionaries, Psychiatric hospital patients, James Augustus Henry - Friends and associates, United States - History - Civil War, Etymology, Great Britain, Oxford English dictionary, Minor, Encyclopedias and dictionaries - History and criticism, William Chester, Psychiatric hospital patients - Great Britain, English language - Lexicography, 1861-1865 - Veterans, Lexicographers, English language, Encyclopedias and dictionaries, New English dictionary on historical principles, Lexicographers - Great Britain, English language - Etymology, History and criticism, Murray, Books & Reading, Encyclopedias
ISBN: 9780060839789
Publisher: New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c1998.
Published: 2005-06-22T23:00:00+00:00

Doctor Minor's sanity, or lack thereof, was never in doubt. He was never so ill as to be ordered away from the benign atmosphere of Block 2 and into the harsher regime of the back blocks (though a strange and terrible incident in 1902 did take him away from his rooms for many weeks). But the ward notes show that his delusions became over the years ever more fixed, ever more bizarre, and that there seemed no likelihood that he would ever regain his reasoning. He was comfortable in Broadmoor, maybe; but there was nowhere else he could be allowed to live.

The ward notes from his first ten years show the sad and relentless progress of his downward spiral. Already at the time he was admitted he had a detailed awareness of the curious happenings that plagued him at night—always at night. Small boys, he believed, were put up in the rafters above his bed; they came down when he was fast asleep, chloroformed him, and then

forced him to perform indecent acts—though whether with them as boys, or whether with the women of whom he dreamed constantly, the record-keepers were never clear. He claimed he would awaken with abrasions around his nose and mouth where they had clamped the gas bottle; the bottoms of his pajama legs were always damp, he said, indicating he had been forced to walk in a stupor through the night.

April 1873: "Dr. Minor is thin and anaemic, excitable in manner, though appears rational by day and occupies himself with painting and playing the flute. But at night he barricades the door of his room with furniture, and connects the handle of the door with the furniture using a piece of string, so that he will awaken if anyone tries to enter the bedroom. . . ."

June 1875: "The doctor is convinced that intruders manage to get in—from under the floor, or through the windows—and that they pour poison into his mouth through a funnel: he now insists on being weighed each morning to see if the poison has made him heavier."

August 1875: "The expression of his face in the morning is often haggard and wild, as though he did not obtain much rest. He complains that he feels as if a cold iron has been pressed against his teeth at night, and that something is being pumped into him. Otherwise, no change."

A year later the demons were seeming to have a depressing influence. In February 1876 the doctors noted: "A fellow-patient stated today that Dr. Minor came to see him in the Boot Room and said he would give him everything, if only he would cut his—Dr. Minor's—throat. An Attendant was ordered to look after him."

The following year was no better. "Socially," he was reported as explaining to an attendant in May 1877, "all systems are based on schemes of corruption and knavery, and he is the subject of their machinations. This lies at the heart of the brutal torture to

which he is subjected each night.

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