Chapter Fourteen

• Author: Richard D. Schneider
• Pages: 145-154

 

Cae Frtee

 -  called by the Crown to give evidence

were, for the most part, the same as had testied previously at the hear-

ing before the grand jury and then again before the coroner’s inquest.

Police constable James Silver described his apprehension of the accused

and explained how, during the course of struggling with M’Naughten

at the time of his arrest, the second pistol was discharged. e items

seized upon his arrest were catalogued as before and Cockburn, rightly,

declined to examine this witness in cross-examination other than to

ask an innocuous question about the timing of the event.

Benjamin Weston, the oce porter who heard M’Naughten’s rst

pistol shot and turned to witness what happened in the following few

minutes, conrmed what was reported by Silver, and again drew very

little in the way of cross-examination from Cockburn. Richard Jack-

son the apothecary, Bransby Blake Cooper the physician, and George

James Guthrie the surgeon once more described the immediate treat-

ment of Drummond after the shooting and through to the ultimate

cause of his death.

But after these requisite preliminaries, the proceedings took a

somewhat dramatic turn when John Tierney, police inspector at A

Division where M’Naughten was held following his arrest, took the

stand. Tierney described his encounter with M’Naughten during his

rst night in custody:

“On the evening of the th of January I went to the station-house in

Gardener’s Lane, where I found the prisoner in custody. Between the

hours of ve and eleven o’clock I visited the prisoner in his cell several

times, and conversed with him. When I rst went to him, I gave him a

caution that in any conversation we might have together he should say