Today Taylor tells the story of "The Professor and the Madman" - how the Oxford English Dictionary was created in the late 1800s. Professor James Murray took up the almost impossible task of cataloging the entire English Language, and asked for the public's help. One volunteer sent in over 10k definitions (which all include quotes and several references) - his return address was the Insane Asylum at Broadmore. Was he a Dr. or a patient??
Today Taylor tells the story of "The Professor and the Madman" - how the Oxford English Dictionary was created in the late 1800s. Professor James Murray took up the almost impossible task of cataloging the entire English Language, and asked for the public's help. One volunteer sent in over 10k definitions (which all include quotes and several references) - his return address was the Insane Asylum at Broadmore. Was he a Dr. or a patient??
Sources
The professsor and the madman - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-professor-and-the-madman_simon-winchester/248697/item/5257676/?
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Taylor's allergies this spring have been super, super intense
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA096.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you. And we are back for another invigorating story with Taylor. How are you, Taylor?
>> Taylor: I'm good. I've been wearing the sleep pajamas for, like, three days. I have the worst allergies I've ever had my whole entire life. So I'm, like, hopped up on allergy medication.
>> Farz: What do you take, Allegra?
>> Taylor: I know. I've been taking Azertech and Benadryl.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Just trying to survive. Like, trying to be able to keep my eyes open, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah. My allergies this spring, or in particular have been super, super intense.
>> Taylor: Ugh. It's been terrible.
>> Farz: But it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's, like, gorgeous here. Like, you should come visit. Like, it's. The weather's unbelievable. The wildflowers are everywhere. It's been so cool.
>> Taylor: I know. It's so pretty. I have, like, all these wildflowers around my house that I think are technically weeds, and they probably are hurting my allergies. But they're also so pretty.
>> Farz: Yes. Leave them.
>> Taylor: Just leaving them. Yeah.
>> Farz: Take more drugs.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly.
Doomed to Fail brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures
>> Farz: Do you want to go ahead and introduce us?
>> Taylor: Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Doomed to Fail. I am Taylor, joined by Fars, and we bring you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. And far as. Can you just. I'm going to take a screenshot of us. Can you do something? Make a face. Okay. I just want. I feel like people want to see our faces, so I just made a screenshot. Cool. It's quite cute. Okay. Yeah. So today I think you talked about some popes last episode.
>> Farz: Indeed.
>> Taylor: Super fun. And I am going to talk about something a little bit different. And, well, I am going to make you guess one thing, but, like, not everything.
There's a movie called the professor and the Madman starring Sean Penn
>> Farz: All right, let's hear it.
>> Taylor: Okay. Oh, my God. I have a screenshot up. And I'm confused because I'm like, are you frozen? But no, I was a screenshot of a picture. I just. Of you. So. Okay. A few weeks ago, I was on vacation. I was at an Airbnb and they had the book the professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Simon Winchester also wrote a book on Krakatoa. This is my second book of his that I've read recently. And I'm going to look at others because we have a lot in common, me and Simon Winchester, the author. But there's Also a movie called the professor and the Madman. Have you heard of it?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: Okay. It stars Sean Penn and Mel Gibson. Guess who's the professor and guess who's the Madman. Just knowing. Just that.
>> Farz: Is Sean Penn the Professor?
>> Taylor: No.
>> Farz: Interesting.
>> Taylor: Sean Penn is the Madman. Yeah. The other hand. Is this though, like, 2009? Ish.
>> Farz: Okay, maybe.
>> Taylor: Maybe more recent. But I was gonna say, if you're not. I was gonna give you another hint before I told you that the professor has a Scottish accent, which, you know, Mel Gibson loves to do, so. He was. And I also remember when you've seen Robin Hood, men in tights, right?
>> Farz: Probably, but probably not enough to remember it now.
>> Taylor: It came out, like, Right. Like a year or two after the Robin Hood with. With what's his face from Ethan Hawke. Yes. With Wolves. No. Kevin Costner.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And Cary Elwes goes, unlike other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent. And it's so funny because it doesn't even bother to try to have an English. It doesn't even bother.
This is a story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary
So anyway, this is a story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is a website that you need to sign up to. To access. And I couldn't get it to work, but it is something that was put together before computers, like indexing the entire English language. Also, like, imagine writing indexes before computers.
>> Farz: So hard.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I love an index, but, like, man, what a job.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So this is a story of three men. Two we'll get to know and one we won't know. There's Sir James Murray, Dr. William Chester Minor, and George Merritt.
London Philological Society wants to write down every English word ever
So we're going to be in England. London and Oxford. London and Oxford, where the colleges are about an hour apart by train today. So maybe like a slower train in the Victorian times, but not too far away from each other. And we're in the late 1800s, so this is like Jack the Ripper time. It's Victorian. The Queen's just had her jubilee. We talked about that in the Jack the Ripper episode. So it's like an exciting time to be alive. Unless you're poor, which most people are. Then it's terrible as.
>> Farz: As it is in any time.
>> Taylor: Yes. So the nerds in London want to make a dictionary and, like, as a joke, but it's actually a huge deal to, like, actually write down every. Every single word and its origin and quotations and cite to the first time that it was written down. There's some context around. Like, why now? Because it's not the first time, obviously. Like, people have been trying to make dictionaries or ways to, like, look at the history of words forever. But at this point, the British Empire is huge at its, like, peak. And they're like, well, well, well, it looks like English is the winner, you know, so we need to make sure that we're writing down the proper way to speak in English so that everyone in the world will be able to know that because they plan to just colonize and forever.
>> Farz: Had that been done by any other culture?
>> Taylor: Most likely, yes.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And it had been done in English as well, but not with the goal of being, like, entirely comprehensive. So in 1755, a man named Samuel Johnson did it, but it lacked some words. Some of the words were, like, too old fashioned. And they wanted all of the words. They wanted to know when they first came into literature, what quotes they could use. And it reminds me of. There's a couple things that I've seen on Instagram recently that are funny. Like, have you heard that, like, the term the bucket list comes from the movie the Bucket List?
>> Farz: There's no way that's true.
>> Taylor: It's true. It doesn't. It wasn't before. Then that's wild. And then, like, the word toast for, like, your toast if, like, you kill someone. Bill Murray said that improvised that in Ghostbusters because he was, like, burning something with his ecto. His proton pack and was like, your toast. And then, then people started using that word.
>> Farz: That's. That's wild.
>> Taylor: And then another one that is albedo Gaslights in the movie Gaslight. We've talked about that before because, like, words are always entering our vocabulary, is my point. The other one that I saw recently in a couple different places online is that the name Madison for a girl is super popular. Like, I have a Madison on my softball team. All these things. And it comes from the 1998 movie Splash with Tom Hanks. Because in the mov, there's a mermaid, Daryl Hannah, who comes. It, like, gets legs and, like, goes to New York City, and they ask her what her name is. And she looks at the street sign and says, Madison. And they're like, that's not a name. And like, that's a big plot point in the movie is that that isn't a name. Why would she be named that? And then after that, there's a huge, like, from zero to huge spike in girls named Madison.
>> Farz: You know, I just learned there's two people in America who are named February.
>> Taylor: That's cool. Good for them. Yeah, that's pretty. Yeah, like that. So anyway, words are changing all the time. And we're adding words and all of that now. It seems a little bit easier, but still very, very daunting. So in 1857, the London Philological Society. And Philological Society is the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development and relationships of a language or languages. So they're like really trying to look at the language and where it came from. And they decide the best way to do it is to crowdsource the words. Like, there's no way one person can just be like, okay, I know every word in English and I know where it came from. That would take lifetimes. But if a bunch of people are doing it, they can maybe get it done quicker. So they send out an ask to, like, everyone in the English speaking world that's like, help us to define and find the history of all of the words. So they said, like, read every book you have. If you find a word that you see, you think you found in that book for the first time, send it in. There was like a very structured way to like, put it on a note card, put the word in the top, top right, put the quote, put the where you found it, everything, and then send us these note cards. And some people were just doing it to get free books because they would, like, get the books and never send them back. It was kind of obviously, like, got unorganized, like pretty, pretty immediately. And they did do some work in the 1860s. So there was a man named Herbert Coleridge, Frederick Furnival. They were the editors in the beginning. But it was kind of a disorganized mess. And so for like 20 years, no one really worked on, just sort of existed as a project. So then in 1879, the Oxford University Press decided that they were going to take up the task, but they needed a new editor, someone to like, really, really take charge and make this a thing. So we meet James Murray.
James Murray was born on February 7, 1937 in Denholm, Scotland
So James Murray is Mel Gibson. He's our professor. He was born on February 7, 1937 in Denholm, Scotland. He was super smart. He went to school till he was 14, till his parents couldn't afford it anymore. He got a job working at a school. He was a headmaster by the time he was 20. So he was really an academic guy. He married a woman named Maggie Scott. She and their daughter Anna died of tuberculosis, which they called consumption in like the first two years. So they had actually moved from Scotland to London for the better climate. Which is hilarious because the climate in London is not cheerful and also it's dirty. But like that the doctor Said move away from the Scottish winters to London and he got a job at a bank. But he didn't love it. So he. It was like Gringotts kind of bank. Like, he was like a bank teller. And he did it.
>> Farz: You had me at Gringott.
>> Taylor: They said. They like specifically said in the book that he had a green lamp, which is what they have. You know what I mean? You could picture it. It's a visor.
>> Farz: Green lamp. Oh, okay. Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know what I mean? That's. That's what it works. So he ended up marrying a woman named Ada Agnes Ruthven. And when they were married, so just to get an idea of, like, the circle that James Murray was in, their best man was Alexander Graham Bell. Like, he's like, hanging out with smarties. Alexander Graham Bell calls Murray the grandfather of the telephone because he just like bounced ideas off of him all the time, man.
>> Farz: Good circle.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So he. Him And Ada have 11 children. And she's more his speech. She's very supportive. In the film, they do this, like, really weird scene at the end where she dies and it shows. Or they just like, she just kind of disappears off screen. And then like, all of a sudden there are grandkids and it shows that, like, their family kept going. And so she was really supported him and all of his work. And so anyway, he's working at a bank. He likes reading etymology. He knows a s*** ton of languages. He applied for a job at the British Museum. And this was in his letter and this was in the book. In the movie, they have Mel Gibson actually say this out loud as he's applying for the job, but he says he has an intimate acquaintance with Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish and Latin and to a lesser degree, Portuguese that is provincial and other dialects. He's tolerably familiar with Dutch, German and Danish. He studies Anglo, Saxon, Saxon and Gothic, Celtic. He's engaged with the Slavonic languages. He has a useful knowledge of Russian, and he has sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read the Old Testament. He also said that he, to a lesser degree, knows Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician. So, like, he knows a lot of languages. He's a smart, smart dude.
>> Farz: Yeah. You'd have to be a genius to keep all that straight in your mind. I wouldn't be able to recite what you just said off my memory.
>> Taylor: Yeah, he like, very casually says, like, oh, I. Oh, yeah. Oh, I guess you know, and you know, I know a little hilt Celtic and I know Hebrew and I know he knows Pashito, which Is like casual Hebrew. Like, I'd look that up. So he knows a whole bunch of things. So in April, he goes to. In April 1879, he goes to the Oxford University Press and gets the job as an editor of the dictionary. In. On March 1, he gets started. They thought it would take 10 years and be four volumes at the end. In the end, it takes actually over 50 years and it's 12 volumes. So it's a lot bigger than they expected it to be. It also doesn't make a lot of money because people buy it, but they don't, like, need to buy it twice, you know, that kind of thing.
>> Farz: So 50 years. Wait, was the same people working on it, was it?
>> Taylor: No, he doesn't get to the end.
>> Farz: Yeah, no.
>> Taylor: So he starts to do some cool things. He builds a scriptorium, which is like a nod to, like, ancient Rome, where you would have, like, the, like, scrolls. Like, Library of Alexandria didn't have books in it. It had scrolls, you know, so, like, that's what. What he. He named it after. He built one where he was living and then later moved to Oxford, which is basically a big shed with little cubbies for every letter of the Alphabet with all these cards stuck into the cubbies for all the different words that they were trying to. To organize. He also looks like an old prophet. He has long white hair and, like, wears robes. Is like a really long white beard. So he's here in his scriptorium. There's a really fun scene in the movie where they're trying to figure out the origins of the word art, which is, like, harder than I thought they thought it would be. And they're all really frustrated. And one of the guys who's working with him goes, this is just A. What about B and C and D and E? And he, like, throws something in the air and, like, runs out of the room. And you're like, yeah, dude, this is a big deal. There's a lot to do. Like, just wait till you get to E. You have no idea.
Murray puts out new letter asking for volunteers to help define words
So he puts out a new letter asking for volunteers. So they had done that 20 years ago. Murray says, we're going to do it again. Puts out a new letter, puts it in newspapers, sends it to school, says, we need more volunteers to help us define words. He gets thousands of letters and he becomes a stamp collector, which is nice because he keeps getting all these letters in and organizing them. That's what they're doing. And he starts to get thousands of letters from one particular person, Dr. William Chester Miner, who's Located at the asylum in Broadmoor, Crawthorne in Berkshire, in England.
>> Farz: Like a mental asylum.
William Chester Miner was born in Sri Lanka in 1834
>> Taylor: So let's meet Dr. William Chester Minor. He's the American. He's our second character. The cute thing to note is that these two look exactly the same. Like, I have white men with a beard, face blindness. They all look the same. But these are two old white men with like long white beards. They look the same back here. Look like good buddies. So William Chester Miner was born on June 22, 1834, in Ceylon, which is present day Sri Lanka. At the time, Sri Lanka was an American colony. And obviously, like in the book the professor and the Madman, they define a lot of words. Like at the beginning of each chapter, they define a word because it's a book about the dictionary. But one that I thought was cool is the word serendipity. So this is like what they had to do for each word, just for an example. And so the word serendip used to be the name of Sri Lanka. Before it was named Sri Lanka, it was called Serendip. And there's a Persian poem by a Persian fairy tale called the Three Princes of Serendip, where the three protagonists were skilled at making accidental yet happy discoveries. So that's part of that, like, Persian fairy tale. And then they use that because of that story, the Princess of Serendip. The word serendipity was first used by Horace Walpole in 1754 to be. To use it the way that we think it is now. Like finding something out of luck. Did you.
>> Farz: How on earth were they trying to find the first usage of the word?
>> Taylor: Yes. So that was what they would do to go back. That's what I'm saying. It's almost impossible. But that's why they had people reading like thousands of books. And then they would say, like, they didn't go. They would, like, they picked a year that they went back to. It was like, wasn't like forever, but it. Well, it was forever for like other. Some words. But some words they were like, let's just go back, you know, 500 years. Like, the furthest they went back in some cases was like Chaucer, you know, like, did Chaucer use this word? Because before that, things weren't even like. Like, you can't. Part of the problem also with reading Chaucer is that the words are spelled in ways that they're not always spelled that way, you know, so like uniform. Making a language uniform is really hard.
>> Farz: Yeah. Now that. Now that you're. We're talking about it. I'm surprised it only took 50 years.
>> Taylor: I know. So, yeah. So that's like. That's what I mean. That's an example. So you had to know that Sri Lanka was called Serendip. You had to know that there was that Persian poem called the Three Princes of Serendip. Then you had to know that Horace Walpole used the term Serendipitous from that. And then now it's a word we, like, use. Yeah, it's wild, you know. So anyway, he was born in Sri Lanka to an American missionary, and his parents are both missionaries. His mom died when he was 3. His dad kind of took him around Asia so his dad could find a new missionary wife, which he did. And so he was able to, you know, have more kids and, like, have a family in Asia. His dad was also a printer, which gave gave Minor the opportunity to learn how to read, you know, really early. They said, like, you know, he read when he was three, all of those things. He was super smart, also spoke many languages. When he was 14, started to, like, go through puberty and kind of, like, start to like girls, and they were like, okay, we got to give you, like, more stable environment. So they sent him back to America to live with an uncle and go to school. So he went to Yale Medical School and became a surgeon. He did, in the 1860s, work on the Webster's Dictionary just for fun, which was, like, obviously other people trying to do it. It's got a lot going on, but. But he's a surgeon in the 1860s, and it is the Civil War, and that is a terrible time to be a surgeon.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's butchery. It's, like, literally scary stuff.
>> Taylor: Yeah. You are not, like, in a beautiful operating room doing nice things. It is pretty terrible. He. Yeah, it basically means, you know, cutting people apart. We've talked about how war brings newer weapons. Like, we talked about that with, like, the Navajo code. Talkers went in with, like, bayonet World War I guns, you know, and then we end up with a atomic bomb. So, like, your change your things, like, progress quickly during times of war. So the weapons were, you know, getting more and more advanced, but the medicine was not. The medicine was staying the same. So it was a lot of, like, you know, chopping someone's, like, off, like, pretty. Pretty bad. And so just, like, a lot of trauma also during this time. He's in his, like, early 20s, and later, much, much later, Minor is going to be diagnosed with schizophrenia when he's, like, an old man. But if you Are schizophrenic. It usually starts to come out for men between the ages of 18 to 25. So even though, like, he didn't know that was happening and he wouldn't be diagnosed with it until much later, it's most likely that he was beginning to, you know, have the hallucinate. Hallucinations and things that go on. Schizophrenia around this time when he's in these, like, really horrible battles of the Civil War.
>> Farz: Yeah, I'm sure.
>> Taylor: So he's in the battle of the wilderness, which just sounds awful. I. It's like literally Grant and Lee are both there. There are wildfires in the middle of it because they're shooting at each other.
150,000 Irish men came to United States to fight for Union Army
There is people bleeding and screaming just like absolutely horror show. And some of the people who are there to help the Union army are people from Ireland, which I didn't know this, but there were 150,000 Irish men came to United States to fight for the Union Army. Some of them were there just to, like, make money and like, have an adventure. Some of them wanted to go back to Ireland, you know, with the skills that they learned in America to be able to fight the English, all that stuff. So they were there. But a lot of them, we're like, this is way worse than we thought it was going to be. So they deserted, like, while they were there. And again, like, if you. If you get far enough, they're never gonna. Never gonna find you.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: You know, but if they did find you, you would be. This is. This is a 50. 50. Maybe this is true, maybe this isn't. But you would be branded with the letter D for deserter on your face. So like, awful disfiguration on your face. Yeah. So you couldn't go home and like, be a spy for the Irish army because people could you really easily identifiable. So it would, like, ruin your life in many different ways. And so the story is that Minor had to do at least one of these brandings. So someone. Someone deserted, they brought them back, and they made Minor, because he was the doctor, be the person to brand the guy's face. And that, like, traumatized him so much. And he was certain that the person he did it to was him for the rest of his life.
>> Farz: Yeah. I mean, I would see why.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So he's like, there are. There's an Irish man always out to get me. So he would always carry a gun with him, which was like, not that. That common in those days. And really wanted to, like, keep himself safe and really thought that there are Irish people after him. After this battle of the wilderness, he starts to kind of, like, be a little bit. You can tell that he has a mental illness brewing. So I sent him to New York. And while he's in New York, he saw a lot of sex workers and got a lot of diseases, which obviously made things worse.
>> Farz: Yeah. Probably lost his mind.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So he. At one point, he had gonorrhea, and he tried to inject white wine into his urethra to cure it.
>> Farz: He was a doctor.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Did not work. So they were like, okay, we got to send you away from this big city. So it sent him to Florida, and he was there for a little bit, but he ends up in St. Elizabeth Hospital, which is a asylum in Washington, D.C. for 18 months. But his condition doesn't really improve. He still thinks people are after him. He, you know, gets discharged from the army, and he has an army pension, and he moves to London to try to start a new life. So in 1871, he moves to London, which he buys a gun because he's afraid that the Irish are after him, which, I mean, are you afraid of Irish? People don't go to England. Yeah. But he lives in Lambeth, which is a part of London. He rents a room at 41 Tennyson St. And his landlady will say that he's always saying that the Irish are trying to get into his rooms. He thinks people are in the floor and the walls and the ceiling. They come at night and try to make him do things. So he says all of these things, you know, he's not. Not doing great.
George Merritt was murdered in 1872 by Dr. Minor
And now we're going to meet our third character, George Merritt. We'll never really meet him. We don't even see his face. But George Merritt was just a dude. He was a father of six with one on the way. He was married to a woman named Eliza. He had moved to London from the country for job opportunities, and he worked at a brewery called the Red Line Brewery. Keeping the fire on. It was called a stoker. So you just, like, keep the fire going while they're boiling the hops, however you may be. So he worked an early shift, and a fun thing is the way he would. He woke up as he paid someone to knock on his window. You know, people did that before there were alarm clocks. So that's fun.
>> Farz: Seems intrusive, and I would not like that.
>> Taylor: So it's like a dude with a stick, and he like, they'll come to my house at, like, 7:45. And he, like, knocks any window with a stick and then goes to the next house and whatever.
>> Farz: So he hits like a. You pay extra for snooze.
>> Taylor: Yeah. You throw a rock at him and you throw him like a quarter in him. And he comes back like a pence or whatever. So he. It's early in the morning of February 17, 1872, and George is on his way to work. It's probably still dark. It's like almost dawn. He's on his way and someone starts yelling at him and chasing him and calling him Irish and saying, you were in my room. Because Dr. Minor thinks that he saw someone run out of his room. So he follows that apparition out into the streets, and the only person there is poor George walking to work or die. So he shoots him, which is something that does not happen very often. So even people hearing gunshots, they were like, what is this? It's like a very odd Victorian crime to have a gunshot. But he shoots him, suffers his spine. George dies on the street. People are like, what is going on? The police come. Minor doesn't leave. He stays. They describe him as like a very tall, very well dressed gentleman. He's literally holding a smoking gun. And he's like, he was chasing me. I don't know what's going on. And then he was like, I also have a knife. And the police were like, just hang on to your knife for now.
>> Farz: A lot going on.
>> Taylor: But they knew him because he'd always. He also knew who he was because they knew he had been acting weird. Like, he was always just like kind of an odd guy in the neighborhood. In history, the papers, it would be called the Lambeth Tragedy. And that is the end of George. But the murder of George is the reason that Minor is going to be in the asylum. At his trial in April 1872, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to. They called it indefinite confinement in safe custody until her Majesty's pleasure be known. Which means, like, for life. And he goes to Broadmoor Asylum in Berkshire. He was 37 years old and he would be there for the next 38 years in that. So Murray is working on the dictionary. Minor is living his life. He ends up in this asylum. And his life in the asylum is actually pretty okay. He has a. He has a $1,000 a month pension, which is $24,000 in today's money per month.
>> Farz: That's pretty good.
>> Taylor: That's not bad. So he uses that for his, like, you know, just for expenses. And he has a really nice room. He's deemed low risk. So he has a really nice room. He gets to buy himself nice furniture, and he has a library. He ends up having two rooms and just, like, thousands of books. It sounds really nice. He gets to watercolor. He likes to watercolor. He gets to paint. You know, he has to just kind of hang out in there somehow. He gets one of the flyers from Dr. From Murray with the ask to send in words for the dictionary. It's possible that the widow Eliza Merritt, George's widow, brought him a book that had the flyer inside of it, and that's how he saw it. She did visit him, and he did give her some of his pension so that she was able to take care of her children, which was very nice.
Sean Penn plays Minor in the movie. Murray didn't know he was a patient
In the movie, they fall in love kind of in, like, a weird way, but that's most likely not true. But they did.
>> Farz: Sean Penn falling in love.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: But he looks awful. Like, he's like, guys, like, big, scraggly beard.
>> Farz: Awful. Anyways.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Like, it's not a weird face.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: It's like a pizza slice.
>> Taylor: So she does. She does bring him books, and maybe one of them had this. But either way, somehow he got a hold of the ask to write words to the dictionary. So he starts writing to Dr. Murray and contributing to the dictionary, and he does it far more than any other person. And it's an extreme, extreme detail. So they use quotes. I mean, again, like, he used quot and he was really good at finding quotes. He was really good at, you know, answering arguments. Like, they had a big. A lot of trouble finding the word art. Like, specifically, they were like, you know, when did we first use the word art? Like, how do you even find that? And he was able to just like, go back and look into the volumes, request more volumes and find it. There's proof that, like, Even in the 1880s, they were speaking together via letter. Before about a decade, Dr. Murray. Murray didn't know that Minor was in the asylum because he was a patient.
>> Farz: To what? He just thought that he was, like, working there.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So there's a couple ways that it could have happened. The romanticized version is that Murray goes to Broadmoor and asks for the superintendent because he assumed that Dr. Minor was a superintendent because he was, like, so smart and so prolific. And then he meets him, like, either in his cell or, like, out in the yard, and he's chained, and he's like, oh, you're a patient here. But more likely, they set out a first edition of the letters A through ant. Like, they published A through ant. There's just so much to do they published a through ant and they had a party, and they assumed that that Minor would come, and he didn't. So Murray was talking about him, and someone was like, oh, I know. I can't believe you're talking to that guy. He's in jail, essentially, you know, and then he figured it out. So he knew, but he didn't, like, tell him that he knew. But later it just, like, was assumed that he knew. Yeah, he was a patient there. So they're like, this must be good. And, like, rehabilitating for Minor, you know, now he has something to do. Like, his office is his office, which is also like, his cell in Broadmoor is just, like, you know, full of stuff. He has a desk. He has all these things in the movie they make. He's like, I need a carpenter, and the carpenter makes him these awesome shelves. And I'm like, how do I get a carpenter once again? Because I'm gonna just come to my house and make me shelves. Seems a lot easier then. But he's not doing well. He is still sick. He still thinks people are in the walls. So there are, like, you know, weeks and months where he cannot contribute. Sometimes that he can. There's sometimes when they try to do other things to him, like electroshock. And like, in the movie, for some reason, they, like, I didn't see this anywhere else, but they would, like, make him throw up a bunch to take pictures of him. And that was, like, part of the thing. It was like, whatever. They're trying to figure out how to make him better. They. He says, you know, these people are coming into my room at night and forcing me to do terrible things. They're forcing me to do terrible sexual things. So eventually that's too much for Minor, and he cuts off his own p****.
>> Farz: Jeez. Do you know how long into his stay he did this?
>> Taylor: I think it was, like, 20 years in.
>> Farz: Wow.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And he, like, did it. He had a knife. Because he had knife, like, opening letters, you know, he did it with that. The guard who found him was traumatized for life, obviously, because he was covered in blood. And he did other things to himself. Like, he was just, like, getting worse and worse. Worse. His mental state was deteriorating. So Murray sees him deteriorating, and he's like, you know, you're my friend, and I want you to have the best care. So they. His brother, Minor's brother, comes from the United States to try to bring him back to the United States so he can be with his family as he's getting older. And then Murray professor does a. A plea to the UK Home Secretary and asks him to be sent back to. Back to the United States and the Home Secretary grants it. That Home secretary is a 35 year old Winston Churchill.
>> Farz: That's fun.
>> Taylor: Do that.
Dr. Miner contributed almost 10,000 words to the dictionary before his death
Isn't that fun? So it goes back to the US and he dies at the retreat of the elderly insane in Hartford, Connecticut in 1920. So he kind of. Once he. Once he moved, he stopped contributing. But he contributed so much to the dictionary for Murray, we can call him Dr. Murray as well. Oxford gave him an honorary doctor in 1914. Before that he was knighted by King Edward VII in 1908. So he's like Sir Dr. Murray, all those things. And then the dictionary was released in installments. Murray spent the rest of his life working on it. He finished because never really finished because always new words, you know, but he completed for sake of completion. A through D, H through K, O, P and T before he died of pleurisy in 1915. Yeah, pretty far. Yeah, pretty good. So he died in 1915 and the book was complete in 1928 is when it was finally finished in its many, many, many volumes of all of the words. Dr. Miner contributed almost 10,000 words over 20 years.
>> Farz: This guy looks like Gandalf.
>> Taylor: They both look like Gandalf.
>> Farz: They both look like Gandalf.
>> Taylor: That's exactly what it is.
>> Farz: You have old white guy blinds. My. I don't think that's black. I think like they. I think they're doppelgangers. I think they legitimately, like they just slit at birth or something.
>> Taylor: I know, it's not fun. They like found each other and like loved words together.
>> Farz: Yeah. It's great. Sad that one of them cut his d*** off, but yeah.
>> Taylor: Said that he killed someone and thought that there were a bunch of people in his walls.
>> Farz: I mean, to be fair, that guy shouldn't have been in his place.
>> Taylor: He wasn't.
>> Farz: I know, okay?
>> Taylor: I made that clear. He was not. He didn't do any of those things. Poor George is talking to her. I know.
>> Farz: He's suffering from mental illness.
>> Taylor: You could stand by a fire all day and make beer sweet.
>> Farz: That is a fun story.
>> Taylor: Is that fun?
>> Farz: Yeah.
Taylor found the book in my Airbnb. Very cool. How did you pick this topic
How did you. How did you pick this topic?
>> Taylor: I found the book in my Airbnb.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: And I just was like, this is cool. I feel like I would want to learn about this.
>> Farz: So I love how we both find these little rabbit holes that take us down.
>> Taylor: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I thought it was super fun.
>> Farz: Very cool. Well, thank you for sharing. Maybe we can cover Webster next week.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah. It can be a dictionary podcast.
>> Farz: I mean, I would be curious about some version of, like, what other. Who else had a dictionary?
>> Taylor: Because remember the Grim. But the Brothers Grimm tried to do a German one.
>> Farz: Okay. Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, at some point.
>> Farz: Well, they never got that far, though.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I think that, like. But I think that, like, when you are thinking like that, like, they were you. You're like, I. Because they were doing the same thing. I think that the Oxford Press and the societies are trying to do here is be like, we need to write down our language and say, like, the correct way to use it, you know, when. Because before the printing press, like, you just didn't do that. You know, another thing about the dictionary is how hard it must have been to make those pages. Like, every time they made a change, the poor printer had to, like, adjust the letter by letter in the printing press. Like, what a job.
>> Farz: Well, the reason I'm also thinking about is, like, the fact that English is the universal language. You know, like, is it because somebody did this?
>> Taylor: I think it's because of colonialism, but I think this was the time that it was the opportunity to do it before, obviously, like, philosophy.
>> Farz: But that theory would mean that the earlier example, then we should all have been speaking Roman universally, and then we should have all spoken Turkish universally. We should all spoke in Persian universe. Like, there's a ton of countries that have taken over a ton of the country or the world and.
>> Taylor: But not at the same time that, like, the printing press was available.
>> Farz: Like, it's. It's dippity. It's serendipity.
>> Taylor: Serendipity.
>> Farz: There you go.
>> Taylor: Exactly.
>> Farz: Back around.
>> Taylor: Oh, God, yes. Good job. Good job. Great work.
>> Farz: Very fun. Taylor, thank you for sharing. Very fun story. Very cool. Very interesting. And you guys got to look up these two guys. They look like an image of, like, a wizard. It's incredible.
>> Taylor: It's incredible.
We are approaching our 200th episode, which is very exciting
>> Farz: Cool. Anything else to share?
>> Taylor: No, I'm going to do some of our requested ones next week. I'm going to look at that list. So thank you, everyone for that. If you have anything that you want us to do, let us know. We are approaching our 200th episode. That's super exciting.
>> Farz: That is very exciting. I can't believe we got this far.
>> Taylor: Me either.
>> Farz: Kudos to us. Pat on the. Back to us.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Thank you to everyone on Patreon, Morgan, Nadine and Juan. Appreciate you. You can find us there and on anywhere on the Internet. Doomed to fail Pod, please tell your friends.
>> Farz: Oh, shout out to my buddy Daniel, who wrote in commenting your episode Taylor, saying he's it's one of the best he's ever listened to about the Navajo code talkers.
>> Taylor: Thank you. I really appreciate that. Daniel. That's awesome.
>> Farz: You haven't heard that one. Go back and listen to that one. But yeah, I think that's all we got. We can go ahead and cut things off there.
>> Taylor: Cool. Thank you.