Strangely, the enormous amount of work that Minor did for the dictionary was a little less at one time of the year: in summer fewer slips arrived from Crowthorne. The editors thought that perhaps
Dr Minor enjoyed the warm days outside, away from his books. But when autumn started again, and the evenings were darker, every word that -Murray needed an entry for was provided from Crowthorne, with more quotations than the editors could use.
Minor sent a total of 10,000 slips to Murray. But this number does not explain his importance to the dictionary — other contributors sent in more. Almost all of Minor’s slips were used in the dictionary, and nearly all of them had been requested by the editors. His slips, in other words, were more useful to the
dictionary than those sent in by other contributors.
The editors were grateful to Minor. The first book of the dictionary, /A—B, was finished in 1888, nine years after work started. The book contains a line of thanks to ‘Dr W C. Minor’.
They did not, of course, know that Dr W C. Minor was as mad at that time as when he had first entered Broadmoor. His guards and doctors had noticed that Minor’s condition had improved when he first started work on the dictionary. But as the years went on, the years between the ages of fifty and sixty for Minor, the old problems returned.
In September 1884 he wrote to Dr Orange that someone was coming into his cell and writing on his books. He wrote that his cell door had opened at 3 a.m. the night before. If nothing was done, he wrote, ‘I shall have to send my books back to London and have them sold.’
A few months later Minor feared that the people who were coming into his cell at night would start a fire. Later he complained that the night—visitors were stealing his food and his musical instruments. He said that two of the guards, named James and Annett, were making him walk about at night. He said that people from the village were coming into his cell at night. He said that people were hitting him, putting electricity through his body.
In 1896 Queen Victoria said that the next book of the dictionary, C, could have her name on the front page. This was, of course, a great honour and meant that the dictionary was at last a success. At about the same time, one of the dictionary’s best contributors was insane and writing that a guard by the name of Coles had come into his cell at night and ‘used my body’.