A Murder in Lambeth

It was approx. 2 am on the Saturday morning of February 17, 1872, when Lambeth residents were awakened by the unfamiliar sound of gunshots breaking through the night. George Merritt was losing his life. He’d been shot through the throat and was bleeding to death, his carotid artery severed and his spine snapped by two large-calibre bullets.

He was on his way to work nightshift as a stoker at the Red Lion Brewery; he had been there for the previous eight years, employed all the time as one of the gangs who kept the fires burning through the day and night, keeping the vats bubbling and the barley malting. He was thirty-four years old and he lived locally, at 24 Cornwall Cottages, on the Cornwall Road.

On his way to work as he passed the entrance to the brewery in Tennison Street when there came a sudden cry. A man shouted at him and then started to chase him, yelling furiously. Unwittingly he had crossed paths with the madman who was now raising a gun and was shooting at him. The first shot missed, whistling past him and striking the brewery wall. The next two shots found their target and fatally wounded him.

Moments later came the running footsteps of Constable Henry Burton, who found the man and attempted to comfort him. Another policeman, William Ward, summoned a passing hansom cab from the still-busy thoroughfare of Waterloo Road. They gently picked up the wounded man from the ground, hoisted him into the vehicle, and ordered the driver to take them as fast as possible to St. Thomas’ Hospital. It was a futile journey.

Who fired the Shots?

Within moments the man who had fired the shots was in the custody of Constable Tarrant. He was a tall, well-dressed man of what the policeman described as “military appearance,” with an erect bearing and a haughty air. He held a still-smoking revolver in his right hand. He made no attempt to run but stood silently as the policeman approached.

“Who is it that has fired?” asked the constable. “I did,” said the man, holding up the gun. Tarrant snatched it from him.

“Whom did you fire at?” he asked. The man pointed down Belvedere Road, to the figure lying motionless beneath a street lamp just outside the brewery store. “It was a man,” he said, with a tone of disdain. “You do not suppose I would be so cowardly as to shoot a woman!”

The Police were to escort their unprotesting prisoner to Tower Street police station. On the way, PC Henry Tarrant described him as cool, collected, and clearly not affected by drink.

His name was William Chester Minor, an American. He was thirty-seven years old, a former army officer in the Union Army where he served as a qualified surgeon in the American Civil War. He had lived in London for less than a year and had taken rooms locally, living alone in a simple furnished upstairs room nearby at 41 Tennison Street.

He evidently had no financial need to live so economically, for he was in fact a man of very considerable means.

William Minor’s Mental Decline

William Chester Minor was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), in June 1834 to New England Congregationalist missionaries. Described as a clever sensitive boy who painted, played the flute, and spoke several languages. At the age of 14, due to his “lascivious thoughts” about the local girls was sent back to America to live with an Uncle. He went on to study medicine at Yale and became a surgeon in the Union Army in 1863.

In May 1864 he was at the Battle of the Wilderness (notable for the horrible casualties suffered) and it is thought that the exposure to the full horrors of war including the burning alive of hundreds of soldiers, horrific casualties and mutilations triggered his mental illness.

As part of his duties, he was forced to brand the letter D on the face of an Irish deserter, a member of the Fenian Brotherhood, and this incident caused him a great deal of mental torment. It is thought to be the basis of his paranoid delusions about the Irish that were a major feature of his later madness.

At the end of the American Civil War, Minor saw duty in New York City but he was strongly drawn to the red light area of the city and spent increasing amounts of time and money on prostitutes. By 1867, his behaviour had come so bizarre that the Army transferred him to a remote post. By 1868 Minor showed growing signs of mental instability, and was placed in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, the U.S. Government Hospital for the Insane. After 18 months he was allowed to resign his commission on the grounds of being “incapacitated by causes arising in the line of duty” and started to receive an Army pension.

He was discharged from the hospital in 1871 and came to London as part of a vacation. He settled in Lambeth, where it offered him easy access to easy women.

The Lambeth Tragedy

The trial that followed was given enough press and it became internationally known as the Lambeth Tragedy, where the extent of Minor’s insanity finally came to light.

His paranoia had returned with a vengeance – He believed people were breaking into his room while he slept. In his delusional state, the former surgeon thought that George Merrett was a home-intruder, although the man had never even set foot in the premises. During his trial, Minor’s landlady testified that no strangers had broken the lodging’s locks.

‘Every morning he would accuse people of trying to break into his room the night before, trying to molest him. He was being persecuted. Evil men were trying to insert metallic biscuits, coated with poison, in his mouth. They were in league with others who hid in the attic, came down at night while he was asleep, and treated him foully. Everything was punishment, he said, for an act he had been forced to commit while in the American army. Only by going to Europe, he said, could he escape his demons. He would travel and paint and live the life of a respected gentleman of art and culture—and the persecutors might melt away into the night.’

Stepbrother, George Minor evidence at the Trial

It was a most curious and disturbing experience. Each morning Doctor Minor would awake and immediately accuse him of having been paid by someone specifically to molest him while he slept. Then he would spit, dozens of times, as though trying to remove something that had been put into his mouth. He would next leap from his bed and scrabble about underneath it, looking for people who, he insisted, had hidden there and were planning to annoy him.

William Dennis – Warder giving evidence at the Trial

On the afternoon of April 6, 1872, Dr William Chester Minor was judged not guilty on grounds of insanity and was detained “until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known” as a “certified criminal lunatic” at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire – becoming Broadmoor File Number 742

As he had his army pension and was not judged dangerous, he was given rather comfortable quarters. Minor was allocated two rooms in the ‘swells block’ at Broadmoor and was allowed both books and painting materials.

Contributor to Oxford English Dictionary

In 1879 Sir James Murray appealed to the public for help with compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary (OED). He had placed an eight-page flyer/ letter into several new books appealing for readers to help find words and quotations for the dictionary.

Minor came across one of these flyers and he began to dedicate his time at Broadmoor to that task. He became one of the project’s most effective volunteers. The compilers of the dictionary published lists of words for which they wanted examples of usage. Minor provided these, with increasing ease as the lists grew reading through his large personal library of antiquarian books and compiling quotations that illustrated the way particular words were used.

His identity remained an enigma to those working on the dictionary and it was only after 20 years of correspondence that in January 1891, Dr Murray and Minor were to meet for the first time. Minor always signed his letters in the same way: Dr W.C. Minor, Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire and initially the OED editor, Dr James Murray, was unaware that Minor was insane. When Murray was shown into the study of Broadmoor’s director he naturally assumed this man was the evasive Minor, only then did he find out that Minor was actually an inmate of the asylum.

In 1899 Murray paid compliment to Minor’s enormous contributions to the dictionary, stating, “we could easily illustrate the last four centuries from his quotations alone.”

He was also visited by the widow of the man he had killed, Eliza Merritt who Minor had agreed to help out financially as she struggled to bring up seven children. This highly unusual request was granted and following an experimental visit she started visiting him monthly and even undertook to collect books from various London bookshops for him.

By 1902 Minor’s mental health had deteriorated and he cut off his penis in an act of self-mutilation (autopeotomy), which he thought would stop his lascivious thoughts.

In 1910 following strong representations from Dr Murray, the US Consulate and others, the then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, signed the necessary papers to allow Minor to be deported back to the USA to St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital where he was diagnosed with dementia praecox or schizophrenia.

He died on 26th March 1920 in Hartford, Connecticut after being moved in 1919 to a Retreat for the Elderly Insane and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery New Haven.

In popular culture

The first complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was completed and published in 1928. It had 15,490 pages in 10 volumes and had definitions for 414,800 words and word forms. James Murray did not live to see the work finished; he died in 1915. The second edition was published in 1989 in 20 volumes with 21,730 pages. The number of word forms had expanded to 615,100. A third edition is scheduled to be published in 2037.

Further reading

The Movie

Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman is the source of the film with the same name, starring Mel Gibson as James Murray & Sean Penn as William Chester Minor.

South London Chronicle – Saturday 24th February 1872

Frightful Murder in Lambeth

A dreadful tragedy was enacted in Belvedere-road, near Hungerford-bridge on Saturday morning last, whereby a respectable man was shot dead in mistake for another man.

The murderer is William Chester Minor, aged 37, described as an American physician, residing at 41, Tenison-street, York-road, Lambeth. He was charged at Southwark Police-court in the afternoon, when the main evidence was given by Police-constable 236L, who said, that a little after two o’clock on Saturday morning he was on duty in Belvedere-road, when he heard a report of fire-arms. He proceeded in that direction and saw the prisoner coming on the opposite side of the road. He went over to him and asked him who it was that had fired. He said he had, and, asking him who he fired at, he said, “A man. I should not be such a coward as to shoot a woman.” Witness seized him and took the revolver produced from his right hand; it was quite warm. He then took him to the station-house, and on the way met another constable, whom he directed to Tenison street, where he found the deceased lying near the wall of the Lion Brewery Stores, bleeding from wounds in the throat. Another constable came up, and they took the body to St. Thomas’s Hospital, when he was found to be dead.

The examination at the police-court was continued on Monday when Mr. De Tracey Goued, of the American Bar, and Mr. John Nunn, Vice-consul of the United States, were present; but upon being asked, the prisoner said he had no wish for their services at present. The landlady of the house in which he lodged was called, and spoke as to his general conduct since he took the apartments on the Wednesday after Christmas. She heard him come home about one o’clock on Saturday morning and go to his room, and about a quarter to two heard him go out; she had not heard him go out of a night before. His room was generally unlocked, except when he was at home; never saw any weapon about the room. Ellen Henderson, living at 19, Tenison-street, stated that about two o’clock on Saturday morning she heard four shots fired in rapid succession; one, two-one, two. Saw a constable running down the street, and directed him to the spot whence the sound of the shots came. The most touching point was when Eliza Merritt, the wife of the deceased man, was giving her evidence. On being sworn she said – I live at No.24, Cornwall-cottages, Cornwall-road. My husband had worked for the Lion Brewery about eight years. He was 34 years of age. On Saturday morning a little before two o’clock he was roused up as usual to go to his work, and he immediately got up and dressed himself. He was in his usual health. He struck a light when he went out and said “good bye,” as usual. For the last three weeks he had gone out at two in the morning. I heard nothing more of him until half-past seven, when I was told he was shot. Between two and three in the afternoon I went to see him at the hospital. I have seven children. The eldest is 18 and the youngest 12 months old, and I expect to be confined with another very shortly. My husband had 24s. a week. Our large family kept us very poor so I am now in deep distress.

Sergeant Steggles, Acting-Inspector at Tower-street Police-station, recalled, and said that after his examination on Saturday he went to the prisoner’s lodgings and found two large portmanteaus. In them he found seven or eight American coins, five bank notes of 20 livres each, a box containing bulleted cartridges (Ely’s make), and five others were handed to him by Mrs. Fisher, who took them from a coat pocket in the room. He found a United States surgeon’s diploma, appointing him assistant-surgeon to the army, dated 1866, and a captain’s commission, dated 1867. He also found a letter of introduction, signed by J.W. Johnson, addressed to Professor Rood, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale College, Newhaven, Connecticut. He found in the room several water-colours in various stages of completion. After the prisoner was removed from the dock, Mr. Nunn, the Vice-consul, returned into court, and said he had had some conversations with the prisoner, who told him the gold watch and chain were heirlooms in his family, and wished them to be given up to him. Mr Partridge desired the inspector to deliver them up to Mr. Nunn.

The inquest on the body was held on Tuesday, when, after hearing the evidence substantially the same as that given before the police magistrate, with the addition of that by Mr. Williams, one of the hospital house surgeons, who said that either of the two wounds to the neck, produced by bullets, was sufficient to account for death, the jury returned a verdict of Wilful Murder against the prisoner, and the coroner made out his warrant accordingly.

Subscriptions have been set on foot on behalf of the family of the murdered man, and while the Rev. H.W. Bateman, vicar of St. John’s, Waterloo-road, states that general subscriptions will be received by him at 158, Stamford-street, or by the secretary to the Lion Brewery Company, Belvedere-road. Mr. Nunn makes as appeal to Americans in London on behalf of the family.

At the inquest the 24s. allowed to the jury were at once handed over to the family.

The Zombie horror ward at Waterloo Hospital(Opens in a new browser tab)