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Re: OED's major contributor, Minor


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Posted by Catherine Lamont on June 11, 2022 at 03:07:22 user clamont.

In Reply to: Re: Shown posted by Magnus Smith on June 11, 2022 at 00:39:07:

Well, a short trip to Wikipedia reveals that he did, indeed, shoot someone and spent most of his subsequent life at Broadmoor. A film called 'The Professor and the Madman', starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, was made of it. Here is what Wikipaedia says.

William Chester Minor (also known as W. C. Minor; 22 June 1834 – 26 March 1920), was an American army surgeon, psychiatric-hospital patient, and lexicographical researcher.

After serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Minor moved to England. Affected by delusions, he shot a man who he believed had broken into his room, and was consequently committed from 1872 to 1910 to a secure British psychiatric hospital.

While incarcerated, Minor became an important contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary. He was one of the project's most effective volunteers, reading through his large personal library of antiquarian books and compiling quotations that illustrated how particular words were used.


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