History is usually written by the winners, but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was written by a polyglot workaholic and a convicted murderer. It sounds like the setup for a high-concept thriller. It isn't. It’s just what happened in Victorian England.
If you’ve seen the movie with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, or read Simon Winchester’s book, you know the broad strokes. But the reality of The Professor and the Madman is actually much stranger, and honestly, a bit more heartbreaking than the Hollywood version suggests. We’re talking about James Murray and W.C. Minor. One lived in a "Scriptorium" in his backyard. The other lived in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Together, they defined the English language.
Who Was the Real Professor?
James Murray wasn't your typical Oxford elite. In fact, he was a bit of an outsider. Born in Scotland, the son of a tailor, he left school at fourteen. He was self-taught. He knew a dozen languages. He was the kind of guy who spent his free time studying the etymology of obscure verbs. When the Philological Society of London finally got serious about creating a definitive dictionary in the late 1870s, they tapped Murray for the job.
He was a man of immense discipline. He built a corrugated iron shed—the Scriptorium—and filled it with pigeonholes. Thousands of them. His goal was to track every single word from its first recorded use to the present day. It was a monumental, borderline impossible task. Murray realized early on that he couldn't do it alone. He needed the public. He sent out an appeal for volunteers to read books and send in "quotation slips" showing how words were used in context.
He expected scholars. He got a surgeon who had lost his mind.
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The Surgeon of Broadmoor
W.C. Minor was an American. He was a Yale-educated surgeon who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. That’s where things went south. Minor was tasked with branding Irish deserters with a "D" on their cheeks. The trauma of the war, combined with what we would now likely diagnose as paranoid schizophrenia, shattered him. He moved to London in 1871, hoping for a fresh start.
Instead, he succumbed to his delusions.
One night in Lambeth, Minor woke up convinced someone was in his room. He chased a man named George Merrett into the street and shot him dead. Merrett was just a stoker on his way to work, leaving behind a pregnant wife and six children. Minor was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
He had money, though. As a retired U.S. Army officer, he had a pension. This allowed him to buy books. Lots of books. His cell became a library. When he saw Murray’s appeal for volunteers, he found a reason to live.
How the Collaboration Worked
For twenty years, Minor was Murray’s most prolific contributor. He wasn't just sending in a few slips here and there. He was submitting thousands. Minor’s method was genius in its simplicity. He would index the books in his library, creating his own private system to find the exact words Murray was looking for.
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Murray was floored by the quality of the work. He noticed that the slips from "Crowthorne" (where Broadmoor is located) were consistently the most accurate. But here’s the kicker: for a long time, Murray had no idea who Minor actually was. He assumed he was a local physician or a shy academic.
The legendary "meeting" happened in 1891.
In the popular narrative, there’s this grand reveal where Murray walks into the asylum and realizes his best researcher is a patient. The truth is a bit more bureaucratic. Murray had been corresponding with Minor for years and eventually decided he had to thank the man in person. When he arrived at Broadmoor, he was reportedly met by the asylum director. Murray supposedly introduced himself to the director, thinking he was Minor, only to be told that the real Minor was an inmate.
The Madness Behind the Words
Why does The Professor and the Madman still fascinate us? It’s the juxtaposition. You have the OED, the pinnacle of linguistic order and Victorian structure, being fueled by a man whose mind was in total chaos.
Minor’s delusions were vivid and terrifying. He believed men were crawling through the floorboards to torture him. He believed he was being transported to Istanbul at night. In 1902, in a fit of religious and sexual guilt, Minor performed a "self-autopeotomy" (he mutilated himself with his surgical knife). It was a gruesome turning point that even James Murray couldn't ignore.
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Murray remained loyal to him, though. He visited Minor regularly. He advocated for his release. Eventually, through the intervention of Winston Churchill (who was Home Secretary at the time), Minor was allowed to return to the United States to spend his final days in an asylum in Connecticut.
Why the Movie Gets It (Mostly) Wrong
Movies need a climax. History usually just fades out.
The 2019 film The Professor and the Madman leans heavily into the relationship between Minor and the widow of the man he killed, Eliza Merrett. While it’s true that Minor sent money to the Merrett family and that Eliza actually visited him in the asylum, the film’s portrayal of a blossoming, almost-romantic forgiveness is a bit of a stretch. The reality was much more about a broken man trying to make amends through the only thing he had left: his intellect and his pension.
Also, the film makes the dictionary process look fast. It wasn't. It was agonizingly slow. Murray died in 1915, still working on it. The first full edition of the OED wasn't actually completed until 1928, decades after the project began.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you want to truly understand the scale of what these men accomplished, don't just watch the movie.
- Read "The Surgeon of Crowthorne": This is Simon Winchester’s original book (titled The Professor and the Madman in the US). It provides the granular detail that the film skips, especially regarding the philological challenges Murray faced.
- Visit the OED Archives: If you’re ever in Oxford, the history of the dictionary is tangible. You can see the original slips. Seeing the handwriting of a man trapped in an asylum while defining the words we use today is a surreal experience.
- Explore the "Dictionary" as a Living Document: The OED isn't a museum piece. It’s updated quarterly. Looking at the "New Words" lists today helps you appreciate the groundwork Murray laid. He didn't just define words; he created a system for tracking the evolution of human thought.
- Research the Broadmoor History: Broadmoor wasn't just a prison; it was a pioneer in what was then the "new" science of psychiatry. Understanding the Victorian approach to mental health gives a lot of context to why Minor was treated with a mix of fear and strange privilege.
The story of James Murray and W.C. Minor is a reminder that brilliance doesn't require a clean resume. Sometimes, the most important contributions to civilization come from the places we’re most afraid to look. One man used his freedom to build a cage of words; the other used words to find a moment of freedom in his cage.