The interests of Arthur Maling: Esperanto, chocolate, and biplanes in Braille

One of the longest-serving of all the assistants who worked on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was Arthur Thomas Maling. Born in Royston in 1858, he read mathematics at Cambridge, and joined James Murray's team in 1886, not long after Murray moved to Oxford. He remained at work alongside Murray in the Scriptorium for the next thirty years; following Murray's death he transferred to Onions's staff, although he also did work for Henry Bradley in relation to words that fell into his special areas of expertise: mathematics, natural sciences, and music. His particular flair, however, seems to have been for function words; he did much of the initial preparation of copy for difficult words such as that and the, and the various pronouns and interrogatives beginning with wh-.

Our knowledge of Arthur Maling's varied interests beyond his Dictionary work is mainly due to his practice of using waste paper of his own as slips on which to write his definitions and quotations - a practice which seems to have been generally encouraged during the First World War, when paper was scarce, but which Maling continued during the remainder of his employment.

In the last photograph of Murray and his assistants, taken in the Scriptorium in July 1915, Maling may be seen wearing a green star in his lapel, the symbol of Esperanto, one of his particular enthusiasms. This enthusiasm extended to making translations of contemporary writers; his translation of five speeches by Henry Drummond was published in 1935. He was also the recipient of other published translations, whose covers and dust jackets were added to his recycling pile and are preserved in the archives as the versos of slips.

There is some evidence - in the form of literature from charities - to suggest that Maling had a particular concern for the blind; perhaps he had a close relative who lost his or her sight, but in any case, he was interested enough in the issue to acquire some kind of device for making Braille. Not content with writing regularly in Braille by this means, he was also quite happy to create pictures with his machine, which he captioned - in Esperanto. Some of these, featuring Braille images of biplanes, were recycled as slips.

Maling was evidently fond of chocolate: among the recycled paper used for his work in W are the wrappers from at least five different varieties. He also enjoyed Horlick's Malted Milk Tablets (or at least had a plentiful supply of wrappers). He was also a keen pianist, to judge from the scraps of covers from piano music scores and the advertisements from piano manufacturers which survive in the archives.

His recycled slips suggest that Maling was a man of means. Many are taken from correspondence with his stockbroker or with the companies whose shares he owned. One of his investments was in the company that became Welwyn Garden City Limited; he also had some interest in another early garden city, Letchworth, as we can see from a scrap of a leaflet advertising ‘Letchworth Civic Week’ in May 1926.

Maling continued working on the Dictionary to the very end; in late 1927 he was assigned to some preliminary work on the Supplement, but in January 1928 his health finally gave way - he had long been troubled by rheumatism - and in June he was pensioned off, only just before the grand dinner held in Goldsmiths' Hall to celebrate the completion of the Dictionary. Later in 1928 he was awarded an honorary MA by Oxford University, in recognition of his work on the OED, the only assistant to be so honoured.