William Chester Minor

Common card · No. 226353

William Chester 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. In 1910, responding to protests about Minor's treatment, Winston Churchill, then British home secretary, ordered Minor deported to the United States. Minor was hospitalized in Connecticut, where he died in 1920.

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