John Bellingham

Assassination of Spencer Perceval, on the far right John Bellingham is being held

John Bellingham (* 1770 in St Neots , Huntingdonshire , † May 18, 1812 in London ) was a British assassin . He shot Spencer Perceval , the only successful attack on a British Prime Minister .

Early life

Bellingham's early life remains in the dark as few sources have survived and most of the post-attack biographies presented speculation as facts. Bellingham was born in St Neots and grew up in London . At the age of 14 he became an apprentice to the jeweler James Love. Two years later he sailed as a midshipman (bottom officer on a British ship) on the Hartwell's maiden voyage to China . On May 22, 1787 there was a mutiny , as a result of which the ship ran aground and sank.

In 1794 a John Bellingham opened a can factory on Oxford Street , which went bankrupt that same year. It has not been established beyond any doubt that this is the same person. What is certain, however, is that Bellingham worked as an employee in an office in the late 1790s . In 1800 he traveled to Arkhangelsk in Russia as an import and export agent , in 1802 he returned to England and worked as a trader in Liverpool . In 1803 he married Mary Neville. In the summer of 1804, Bellingham returned to Arkhangelsk.

Russia

In the autumn of 1803 the Russian ship Soyuz sank in the White Sea . It belonged to the R. Van Brienen trading company and was insured with Lloyd’s . When the trading house wanted to assert the damage, Lloyd's refused, as the shipwreck had been caused by sabotage . Lloyd's was informed of this in an anonymous letter. Soloman Van Brienen suspected that Bellingham had written the letter. In retaliation, he claimed to be Bellingham's bankruptcy trustee and claimed outstanding debt of 4,890 rubles . As a result, on November 16, 1804, Bellingham's passport was withdrawn. This made his imminent return to England impossible.

Van Brienen urged the area governor general to arrest Bellingham. He was released a year later and made his way to St. Petersburg . There he tried to confront the governor general. This provoked the Russian authorities and Bellingham was arrested again for “secretly leaving” from Arkhangelsk. In October 1808, Bellingham was released but was not given permission to leave the country. In desperation, he turned to the Tsar personally . Finally he was allowed to leave and reached England in December 1809.

Return to England

On his return he asked the British government for compensation for his detention, which was refused; Great Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Russia in November 1808. His wife convinced him to withdraw the case and so Bellingham went back to work.

In 1812, Bellingham made another attempt to obtain compensation. On April 18, he went in person to the State Department , where an employee named Hill assured him that he would be free to take whatever steps he deemed necessary. Bellingham, however, had a very different solution to the problem in mind. On April 20, he bought two pistols from the armorer W. Beckwith at 58 Skinner Street. He also had a tailor make a secret inner pocket in his coat. He has also been spotted frequently in the lobby of the House of Commons .

Attack on Spencer Perceval

After accompanying a friend's family to an exhibition of watercolors on May 11, Bellingham casually realized he had business to attend to and went to Parliament at the Palace of Westminster . He waited in the lobby for Prime Minister Spencer Perceval to appear, then stepped forward and shot him in the heart. Then Bellingham sat quietly on a bench. He was immediately arrested by bystanders and identified by Isaac Gascoyne, the MP for Liverpool.

process

On May 15, Bellingham was tried at the Old Bailey . There he stated that he would have preferred to shoot the Russian ambassador to Great Britain. But as a man who had been tricked, he felt right to shoot the representative of those people whom he considered to be his oppressors. Bellingham was found guilty, sentenced to death and publicly hanged on May 18 . The case is occasionally cited as a precedent for people who may be mentally disturbed to be sentenced to the death penalty .

Others

In the 1983 general election , his descendant Henry Bellingham was elected as a member of the North West Norfolk constituency. In the 1997 general election , Roger Percival, a descendant of Spencer Perceval, was one of his opponents.

Web links

• John Bellingham Court Case File ( September 27, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff , Assassin - Change the world with a bullet. , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-412-03003-1 , p. 46.