The dictionary's star contributor lived in an asylum

Building the Oxford English Dictionary required real examples of every word in use, so its editor, James Murray, issued a public appeal: any reader could send in quotations on slips of paper. Among the thousands of volunteers, one soon stood out — William C. Minor, a cultivated, meticulous American surgeon who went on to send tens of thousands of slips, so well chosen that the team ended up requesting specific words from him, as they would from a professional collaborator.

Minor was a veteran of the American Civil War who suffered from delusions of persecution. One night in 1872, in London, he shot dead a labourer named George Merrett, convinced the man was attacking him. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity and he was confined to Broadmoor, where he occupied two cells: one to sleep in, the other for his library. From there he worked for the dictionary for two decades.

Murray eventually visited him, and kept visiting for years: they became friends. And there is one detail no novelist would dare invent: Merrett's widow also went to see him, forgave him, and for a time brought him books.