It had been a long and busy day for Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval.
Now, at 5.15pm, on 11 May, 1812, he returned to the House of Commons in order to attend an enquiry into political procedure.
He stepped into the lobby of the Commons, looking around for familiar faces. But the person he noticed was neither familiar nor friendly.
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| Bang, bang, you're dead. |
His name was John Bellingham - a merchant - and he harboured a deep grievance against the Prime Minister.
Bellingham stepped forwards, pulled out a gun, and shot Percival through the heart at point blank range. The prime minister reeled from the force of the shot, then collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood. 'Murder' he was heard to gasp. 'Oh my God.'
Bystanders rushed forwards and picked him up off the floor. They carried him into an adjoining room, where he was laid on a table with his head and feet propped up with chairs.
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| It was too late to save him. |
One of the men felt for his pulse: it was beating faintly. There was still hope and a surgeon was urgently summoned. But by the time the surgeon had arrived it was too late. Spencer Perceval was dead - the only British prime minister to be assassinated.
In the lobby of the Commons there was pandemonium. But the murderer, Bellingham, made no attempt to escape or even to resist arrest. Instead, he calmly explained how he had been wrongly imprisoned in Russia and had long been petitioning for compensation from the British government. But his pleas had been constantly rejected.
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| Killed at point blank range |
On 18 April, he visited the Foreign Office in yet another attempt to recover his money. He chatted with a civil servant who, with a weary sigh, advised him to do whatever he thought right to get compensation.
Infuriated by the attitude of the government, Bellingham went straight to a well-known London gunsmith, W Beckwith, in Skinner Street, and bought two half-inch caliber pistols. He then visited his tailor and asked him to sew a secret pocket into his coat.
He now began to plan his assassination in earnest. It was to take place on 11 May, and he decided to shoot the Prime Minister at point blank range in the House of Commons.
On the day of the crime, he visited an exhibition before making his way to Parliament. He then hung around in the lobby until the Prime Minister appeared, without security, shortly after 5pm.
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| Bellingham: not a happy man |
Bellingham shot him directly through the heart and then sat down calmly and awaited his inevitable arrest.
He was tried three days later at the Old Bailey. His defense, based on extremely dubious legal reasoning, was that he’d been wronged and was therefore entitled to kill the representative of his ‘oppressors’.
He gave a formal statement to the court, saying: ‘Recollect, gentlemen… that my family was ruined and myself destroyed, merely because it was Mr Perceval's pleasure that justice should not be granted.’
He put forth a lengthy argument along these lines, prompting the court to question whether or not he was insane. But this was thrown out by the judge, Sir James Mansfield, who found him guilty.
His sentence was as follows: ‘That you be taken … to a place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck until you be dead; your body to be dissected and anatomized.’
The hanging was carried out in public on Monday, 18 May. According to eyewitnesses, there was widespread sympathy for Bellingham. One French observer said the crowd was openly saying that he had rendered an important service to the country.
A public subscription was raised for Bellingham’s widow and children and large numbers of people donated money. ‘Their fortune was ten times greater than they could ever have expected in any other circumstances.’
The widow of Spencer Perceval was rather less fortunate. She discovered that her husband had left her and her 12 children just £106 in the bank.
Parliament had to step in to save them from abject penury.
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