Daniel M'Naghten - Spelling of The Name

Spelling of The Name

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 March 4, 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 second 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, was careful enough to use an inverted apostrophe to resemble more closely the letter c. The spelling "McNaughtan" was confirmed again 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, indicated that the spelling "McNaughtan" was the one used by the M'Naghten family.