The shot rang out near Charing Cross shortly before four o’clock on Friday, January 20, 1843. Edward Drummond, private secretary to Sir Robert Peel, staggered, carrying his hand to his back. A few paces away, Daniel M’Naughton was returning a pistol to his coat and drawing a second. Police Constable James Silver darted across the street and seized him; the weapon discharged in the struggle. Drummond did not fall. He walked back to the bank where he was employed, and was thence conveyed to his residence. For several days, hopes were entertained for his recovery. He expired on January 25.
The pamphlet preserves as well the procedural delay that preceded the trial. On February 2, M’Naughton’s counsel moved for a postponement: the defense had only just been instructed, the documents were voluminous, and depositions from Scotland—and perhaps from France—remained to be procured. The Attorney-General confirmed that the Scottish depositions contained material facts proper to be laid before the jury. The Court adjourned the trial to the following sessions and granted funds toward the preparation of the defense. The record of March thus opens upon proceedings already protracted by the search for witnesses.
Two bystanders described the handling of the weapons. Silver observed the first pistol returned beneath the coat, and then M’Naughton drawing the second. Benjamin Weston, an office porter, related that the man stepped back, drew the weapon, and leveled it at the wounded gentleman before Silver grappled with him. He characterized the action as deliberate, though noting it had been swiftly executed. At M’Naughton’s lodgings, the police discovered powder, percussion caps, and balls fitted to the pistols. Mr. George Guthrie, surgeon, ascribed the death to the wound, which had traversed the trunk and injured the diaphragm; Mr. Bransby Cooper concurred in that opinion. The extracted ball was produced in court.
The identity of the marksman was scarcely in dispute. His intention, however, proved elusive. The initial public accusation maintained that M’Naughton had intended to assassinate Peel, mistaking Drummond for the minister. In his opening address, the Solicitor-General declared that the prisoner had lurked about the purlieus of the government offices, seeking the life of the Prime Minister. The depositions established his repeated presence near Whitehall: police constables, recruiting sergeants, and clerks had remarked the Scotsman lingering upon the steps of a department or in the vicinity of Downing Street. Several deponents recalled him stating that he was waiting for “a gentleman.” Yet these depositions did not, of themselves, establish what figure he believed he beheld in Drummond at the moment of the shot.
M’Naughton had been reared in Glasgow and had earned his livelihood as a wood-turner. Witnesses for the Crown depicted him as orderly in his affairs, punctual in discharging his rent, and capable of conducting his banking transactions. He had laid by savings, attended the Mechanics’ Institution, and followed lectures on anatomy. He had likewise purchased pistols at Paisley several months prior to the assault. Such facts were capable of imparting to his actions the appearance of methodical design. His former associates, however, drew no single conclusion from them: while some observed nothing untoward, others remembered a man withdrawn, perturbed by night, or noticeably altered in his speech.
On the very day of January 20, several persons had caught sight of him near Peel’s offices. James Partridge stated that he had inquired whether he was awaiting anyone; M’Naughton reportedly answered that he was waiting for a gentleman. Another officer testified that he was frequently seen haunting the neighborhood. His landlady, Eliza Dutton, perceived nothing extraordinary on the morning of the assault. She regarded him as sober and frugal, but recalled likewise his seclusion, his curt replies, and nights when he would rise from bed moaning. Her testimony did not constitute a diagnosis: it merely set side by side ordinary deportment and signs she had not then recognized as morbid.
The defense did not dispute the shooting. His counsel, Mr. Alexander Cockburn, urged the jury rather to examine what M’Naughton had been uttering for months past. The narrative of his persecutions ran through the Glasgow testimony: Catholic priests, Jesuits, the police, and subsequently the Tories were alleged to have conspired against him. The confederacies shifted, yet the conviction of being dogged persisted. He had solicited aid and protection from men of standing and public functionaries. Mr. Alexander Johnston, Member of Parliament, preserved his written reply to M’Naughton: he feared the applicant labored under an aberration of mind, and assured him that he possessed, in his judgment, no ground for entertaining such alarms. The Lord Provost, Sir James Campbell, likewise related having received M’Naughton, heard his complaint, and discerned in him what he deemed a singular delusion.
The recollections of those who knew him were far from uniform. His father, formerly his master in trade, described a son who believed himself hunted and who sought the intervention of the authorities. A roommate recalled nocturnal awakenings and disjointed words; another presented him as mild, studious, and harmless. His Glasgow landlady, Jane Drummond Patterson, related that he had spoken to her of spies following him through the streets and even across the sea. These were not scenes witnessed by impartial observers: they were words a witness recollected hearing, recounted in the course of a trial wherein each party arranged them to contrary ends.
M’Naughton was not called to testify. In court, Dr. E. T. Monro reported instead the examination that several medical men had conducted in the prison on February 18. According to his account, M’Naughton declared that a “crew” pursued him from Glasgow to Boulogne, and that everywhere signs and glances confirmed his persecution. Monro reported further that he had imagined Drummond to be one of that crew, believing he might obtain peace by slaying him. These were the patient’s utterances as reconstructed by the physician several weeks later, not a direct deposition from the dock. Separately, the clerk read to the jury a written statement signed after the arrest: the Tories of his native city had compelled him to act, dogging him wherever he went. The record thus affords two instances of reported speech, without demonstrating the objective truth of such accusations.
The most delicate question turned upon the connection between this delusion and the pistol shot. Inspector John Massey Tierney recounted a colloquy held in the cell: having been cautioned that his words might be used against him, M’Naughton allegedly told him he was persecuted by the Tories. On the following day, Tierney inquired whether he knew who the gentleman was whom he had shot. According to the officer, M’Naughton replied at first: “It is Sir Robert Peel, is it not?” and then, upon Tierney correcting him, explained that he had taken Drummond for one of his persecutors. Cockburn impugned the propriety of this interview and Tierney’s part in it; other medical testimony did not tally precisely with the exact words uttered in the gaol. The trial, therefore, did not settle every detail of the intended target through a single, uncontroverted narrative.
On Saturday, March 4, the medical witnesses occupied the center of the proceedings. Dr. Edward Monro, physician to Bethlem Hospital, had examined M’Naughton in company with colleagues, among whom were practitioners deputed by the government. He testified to having heard a deep-seated conviction of persecution, pronouncing the malady genuine. Sir Alexander Morrison, Mr. William M’Clure, Dr. William Hutcheson, and Dr. Patrick Crawford delivered concurring opinions: in their view, a delusion might completely master a particular subject while the individual appeared to reason lucidly upon other concerns; they deemed that this delusion had deprived M’Naughton of all control over his actions. Mr. Gilbert Macmurdo, surgeon of Newgate, who had observed him daily, shared this judgment. Dr. Forbes Winslow and Mr. Aston Key, a surgeon, who attended the trial without prior retainer from either party, likewise concluded that he was insane at the time of the deed.
The prosecution, however, had marshaled a very different case. Its witnesses had proved the savings, the business letters, the journeys, and the purchase of the arms; the Solicitor-General had contended that premeditated conduct and the selection of a public thoroughfare indicated criminal responsibility. Yet he called no medical gentleman to rebut the experts brought forward by the defense. Chief Justice Tindal observed that the medical evidence was entirely on one side, and inquired of the Solicitor-General whether he possessed any conflicting medical testimony to offer. The latter replied in the negative, adding that he could not press the jury for a verdict of guilty. This withdrawal by the Crown did not yet constitute the verdict: the determination still rested with the jury.
Chief Justice Tindal thereupon put to them a narrowed question concerning M’Naughton’s capacity to understand, at the moment of the act, that he was doing what was wicked and contrary to the law. The jury inquired whether further evidence was required; the Chief Justice replied that he did not desire to press any. His Lordship directed them, should they acquit him, to state that it was on the ground of insanity, so that orders for his safe custody might follow. The foreman delivered the verdict: “Not guilty, on the ground of insanity.” It was a special verdict of acquittal, distinct from a bare declaration of not guilty without assigned cause.
The Court ordered the keeper to detain him in safe custody until Her Majesty’s pleasure should be known. The account adds that he was removed on Wednesday, March 15, from Newgate to Bethlem Hospital, pursuant to an order from Sir James Graham, Secretary of State for the Home Department. There the record ceases. It recounts the shot, the conflicting testimonies of preparation and persecution, the decision of the jurors, and the order of safe custody; it relates nothing of M’Naughton’s subsequent fate. Upon this stage, justice did not designate a murderer to be punished: it acknowledged the deed, heard the contested condition of the mind, and committed the man’s custody to the authority of the Crown.