Daniel M'Naghten (sometimes spelled McNaughtan or McNaughton) (1813 – 3 May 1865) was a Scottish woodturner who assassinated English civil servant Edward Drummond while suffering from paranoid delusions. Through his trial and its aftermath, he has given his name to the legal test of criminal insanity in England and other common law jurisdictions known as the M'Naghten rules.
Life
Name and spelling
There is disagreement over how M'Naghten's name should be spelt (Mc or M' at the beginning, au or a in the middle, a, e, o or u at the end). M'Naghten is favoured in both English and American law reports, although the original trial report used M'Naughton; Bethlem and Broadmoor records use McNaughton and McNaughten. In a 1981 book about the case, Richard Moran, Professor of Criminology at Mount Holyoke College, uses the spelling McNaughtan, arguing that this was the family spelling. Until 1981, there was only one known signature: that which M'Naghten affixed to a sworn statement given before the magistrate at Bow Street during his arraignment. This signature, preserved in the Metropolitan Police File at the Public Records Office in Chancery Lane, London, first came to the attention of legal scholars in 1956. According to an authority at the British Museum this signature was spelt McNaughtun. Since this spelling did not conform to any of those in popular use, it did not help to resolve the controversy.
Moran discovered a second signature during his research. On the front page of the Scotch Reformers Gazette, supplementary edition for 4 March 1843, there appeared an artist's sketch of Daniel M'Naghten standing in the dock at Old Bailey, accompanied by an engraving of his signature. This signature revealed that the apparent u in the Bow Street signature was actually an a. It also indicated that the apostrophe was used by printers to signify a small letter c placed above the line, since the Scotch Reformers Gazette, in the article accompanying the sketch and signature, used an inverted apostrophe to resemble more closely the letter c. The spelling "McNaughtan" was confirmed in the Glasgow Postal Directory for the years 1835 to 1844. While the Victorians were not always consistent in the way they spelled their names, even in official documents, several signatures of M'Naghten's father, uncovered while examining financial records at the Bank of Scotland, indicate that the "McNaughtan" spelling was the one used by the family.
Early life
Most of what is known about M'Naghten comes from evidence given at his trial and newspaper reports that appeared between his arrest and his trial. He was born in Scotland (probably Glasgow) in 1813, the illegitimate son of a Glasgow woodturner and landlord, also called Daniel M'Naghten. After the death of his mother Ada, M'Naghten went to live with his father's family and became an apprentice and later a journeyman at his father's workshop in Stockwell Street, Glasgow. When his father decided not to offer him a partnership, M'Naghten left the business and, after a three-year career as an actor, returned to Glasgow in 1835 to set up his own woodturning workshop.
For the next five years, he ran a successful woodturning business, first in Turners Court and then in Stockwell Street. He was sober and industrious, and by living frugally was able to save a considerable sum of money. In his spare time, he attended the Glasgow Mechanics' Institute and the Athenaeum Debating Society, walked, and read. He taught himself French so that he could read La Rochefoucauld. His political views were radical, and he employed the Chartist Abram Duncan in his workshop.
In December 1840, M'Naghten sold his business and spent the next two years in London and Glasgow, with a brief trip to France. In the summer of 1842, he attended lectures on anatomy in Glasgow, but otherwise, it is not known what he did with his time. Whilst in Glasgow in 1841, he complained to various people, including his father, the Glasgow commissioner of police, and an MP, that he was being persecuted by the Tories and followed by their spies. No one took him seriously, believing him to be deluded.