– Tending to irritate repellent.)Īdditional notes for those who may be interested:

Simon Winchester has obviously been trawling through the dictionary himself! Hands up those who know what rebarbative means? (Me neither!) (See photos here from the book) Strangely, a friendship also eventually developed between Minor and Merritt’s widow Eliza, who forgave him for his crime and visited him for some considerable time. Winchester writes compellingly and compassionately of the tragedy of Minor’s life, and Merritts death, of the enduring friendship that developed between Minor and Murray and of their invaluable contributions to the great Oxford English Dictionary. He was found to be insane and detained in safe custody “until her majesty’s pleasure be known.” He was then 38 years old and spent almost the entire remainder of his life in confinement. He travelled to England in 1871 and in February 1872, in a deluded state, shot and killed George Merritt an innocent man on his way to work. He gradually developed what would nowadays be regarded as paranoid schizophrenia. He was highly regarded but had some horrible experiences, which may have served to destabilise him. William Minor was a surgeon in the American army and served during the Civil War. When Murray elected to investigate, he discovered that Broadmoor was (is) a high security psychiatric institution, that Dr Minor was inmate 742 and was quite insane. Strangely, Minor never travelled to London, only a short distance away and politely refused to attend even the honorary dinner, at which he would have been a distinguished guest. One of the most prolific (and one of the most valued) of these contributors was Dr William Minor, a retired American Army surgeon, who devised an ingenious method of categorising words and whose address was given, simply and enigmatically as Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire. The man who was the principal driving force for much of this time was Sir James Murray, a Scotsman of enormous intellect (by my count he was either fluent in, or had a working knowledge of over 26 languages!) The prodigious task of word finding was undertaken by an army of volunteers, who sent in over six million slips of paper. The over-arching story is that of the compilation of the great Oxford English Dictionary, which was 70 years in the making starting from 1857. (Well, actually a very helpful librarian hunted it down for me, whilst I stood looking helpless, but lets not dwell on that.) It is not a large book – just over 200 pages and easily read. But a friend recommended it, so I hunted it down in the library. This is not a new book – it was published in 1998.

The surgeon of crowthorne review