“until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known”

“until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known” was the judge’s formal sentence for William Chester Minor after a jury found him not guilty of murder on grounds of insanity. Its ceremonious language softened nothing: it placed the duration of his detention beyond any fixed term and introduced a long confinement whose consequences reached into the history of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Sentence in Court

At the Kingston Assizes on 6 April 1872, the jury found Minor legally innocent without deliberating, although he had killed George Merrett. The court had directed them to apply the M'Naghten Rules: if they accepted that Minor was of unsound mind and had killed under a delusion, they were to return a verdict of not guilty on grounds of insanity. The verdict concerned criminal responsibility, not whether the killing had occurred.

The judge then imposed the custodial sentence available to him: “You will be detained in safe custody, Dr Minor,” he said, “until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known.” The formula contained no release date. The Home Department decided that Minor would be detained at Broadmoor Asylum, where he was designated Patient Number 742 and held in permanent custody as a certified criminal lunatic.

Formal Language and Actual Consequence

The sentence’s stately phrasing sits in sharp contrast to the severity of its effect. The book notes the phrase’s “beguiling charm” alongside the “swingeing awfulness” of its implications: what sounds like a deferential formality subjected Minor to confinement expected to last for the rest of his life. The wording names the authority that would determine his future, while leaving the duration—and the practical meaning of that future—open.

The expression therefore marks more than the close of the trial. It turns the jury’s finding about Minor’s mental state into an enduring custodial consequence. The legal formula was brief; the confinement it initiated would shape the circumstances of his later life.

Literary Afterlife

Minor’s detention at Broadmoor became an unforeseen link in the history of dictionary-making. He contributed to the dictionary while living there, and his relationship with James Murray developed into a long personal acquaintance. Their first meeting took place in January 1891, rather than at the later date popularized by a romantic account Hayden Church published in 1915. The book distinguishes that legend from the evidence of a 1902 letter by Murray describing his acquaintance with Minor. In this way, the sentence’s consequences extended well beyond the courtroom: the institution to which Minor was sent became the setting for a consequential scholarly friendship.