In the Dundee Police Court yesterday — before Bailie Stevenson — John McGonagall, ropespinner, and Mary McGonagall, mill worker, a son and daughter of the famous poet McGonagall, were remitted to the Sheriff charged with having assaulted a man named William Harley to the fracture of bones. It is alleged that a quarrel broke out between the complainer, who is said to be sixty years of age, and the poet’s children at the door of their father’s residence in Step Row about midnight on Saturday. The McGonagalls, in defending their position, attacked the old man, beat him, and kicked him so severely that some of his ribs are said to have been fractured.
Dundee Courier, 11th April 1893
