Everything about William Chester Minor totally explained
William Chester Minor, also known as
W. C. Minor (June
1834 –
March 26,
1920) was an
American surgeon who made many scholarly contributions to the
Oxford English Dictionary while confined to a
lunatic asylum.
Early life
Minor was born on the island of
Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka), the son of
Congregationalist Church missionaries from
New England. He had numerous half-siblings, among them
Thomas T. Minor, mayor of
Seattle, Washington in the late 1880s. At 14 he was sent back to the
United States by
steamship, finishing his education as a surgeon at
Yale in
New Haven, Connecticut in 1863.
Military career
He was accepted by the Union Army as a surgeon and served at the
Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, which was notable for the terrible casualties suffered. Minor was also given the task of punishing fugitive soldiers by
branding them with a
D for "
deserter". Some of these men were Irish immigrants, which would later play a role in Minor's dementia delusions.
After the end of the
American Civil War Minor saw duty in
New York City. He was strongly attracted to the
fleshpots of the city and devoted much of his off-duty time to going with
prostitutes. By 1867, his behavior had come to the attention of the
Army and he was transferred to a remote post in the
Florida Panhandle. By 1868 his condition had progressed to the point that he was admitted to
St. Elizabeths Hospital, a lunatic asylum in
Washington, DC. After eighteen months he showed no improvement. He was allowed to resign his commission and take retirement pay.
Insanity
In 1871 he went to the
UK settling in the slum of
Lambeth, in
London where once again he took up a dissolute life. Haunted by his paranoia, he fatally shot a man named George Merrett, who Minor believed had broken into his room, on
February 17,
1872. Merrett had been on his way to work to support his family of six children, himself, and his pregnant wife, Eliza. After a pre-trial period spent in London's
Horsemonger Lane Gaol, Minor was found not guilty by reason of
insanity and incarcerated in the asylum at
Broadmoor in the village of
Crowthorne, Berkshire. As he'd his army
pension and wasn't judged dangerous, he was given rather comfortable quarters and was able to buy and read books.
Later life and OED contributions
It was probably through his correspondence with the London booksellers that he heard of the call for volunteers from what was to become the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED). He devoted most of the remainder of his life to that work.
He proved to be one of the most effective of the volunteers, systematically reading through his library, and compiling lists of the occurrence of words. These he kept current with the words needed in the volume being worked on at the time. As his lists grew, he was able to supply quotations on demand for a particular word. Eventually he became well acquainted with the editor of the OED, Dr.
James Murray, who visited him at the asylum and befriended him.
Minor's condition deteriorated and in 1902 he
cut off his own penis. His health failed and he was permitted to return to the
United States and
St. Elizabeths Hospital. The science of
psychiatry had progressed in the meantime and Dr. Minor was diagnosed as suffering from
dementia praecox or
schizophrenia. He died in 1920 in
New Haven, Connecticut.
Further Information
Get more info on 'William Chester Minor'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://william_chester_minor.totallyexplained.com">William Chester Minor Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
