Jenny McMorris

Jenny McMorris, OED Archivist, died of a brain tumour on 5 November 2002.

Since first coming to work at the OED Supplement (then in 37a St Giles) as a freelance archivist in the 1980s, Jenny applied a blend of skilled professionalism and personal enthusiasm to the task of ordering a heterogeneous collection of files, letters, and papers.

It was Jenny who opened a famous chapter of OED history by identifying the handwriting of a number of manuscript indexes as that of Dr Minor. Her detailed knowledge of the archives was unexampled, and her regular in-house exhibitions of archive material were both informative and enjoyable. (A notable one on Father Rope, whose connection with the OED lasted for over 70 years, included an advertisement for iodine socks, and a ticket for a raffle to be drawn, in 1925, by His Eminence Cardinal Bourne.)

Her greatest affection, however, was reserved for Henry Watson Fowler, and it was a true labour of love to research and publish her acclaimed biography The Warden of English (Oxford, 2001).

Any future historian of the OED will owe a tremendous debt to Jenny for her ordering and indexing of the OED Archives; those of us who knew her will remember also her ability to communicate the interest and excitement she found in her work, and the delight with which she would recount her latest discovery.