The only UK prime minister to ever be assassinated has almost been forgotten

The names of some UK prime ministers still resonate with history students and the general public alike: Thatcher, Churchill, Lloyd George, Gladstone, Disraeli.

But if you mention poor old Spencer Perceval to many Brits – at least those who aren’t regulars on the pub quiz circuit – you’ll likely be met with blank faces.

The PM from 1809 to 1812, Perceval is only remembered today as the holder of a title which none of his successors hope to take away.

He’s the only British prime minister to ever be killed in office.

And the circumstances surrounding his assassination are so dramatic, it’s surprising the story has slipped out of our national memory.

Unfortunately, that story isn’t really about Spencer Perceval. It’s more about a man called John Bellingham, from the Cambridgeshire town of St Neots, who was locked up in a Russian prison for five years in 1804.

A merchant, he had travelled to the city of Arkhangelsk on a business trip that summer. While he was there, he was accused – rightly or wrongly – of failing to pay back a debt, and was thrown in jail.

Over the half-decade Bellingham spent stewing away inside his cell, he developed an almighty grievance over what he saw as a false conviction for a crime he didn’t commit.

He had tried writing to the British Ambassador in St Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire, but was told no help could be offered. Upon his release, he kept on badgering officials in Whitehall for compensation, but again he got nowhere.

After five years in prison and three years of rejection, something inside Bellingham snapped. He decided the only way he was going to get anything done about this criminal record faff was by shooting the prime minister.

Perceval, who had become prime minister the same year Bellingham was freed from jail, was the son of an earl and fathered 13 children of his own. A lawyer by trade, he remains the only person to have served as both attorney-general and head of the government. Perhaps that’s how he’d prefer to be remembered.

Bellingham had other ideas. On May 11, 1812, he lay in wait on a bench in the House of Commons lobby. (Incidentally, this was the old parliament from before the massive fire in 1834, which resulted in today’s more familiar replacement.)

At around 5.15pm, as Perceval was making his way through the busy room, the assassin leapt up and shot him at point blank range. The PM cried out: ‘Oh! Murder! Murder!’

He collapsed on the floor moments later, and his corpse was taken into the adjoining secretary’s room.

The murderer simply went back to his bench. He knew from the start he wasn’t getting away with it: as mentioned above, it was a busy room. There were up to 30 witnesses to his shocking crime.

In the end, no pardon was forthcoming for Bellingham’s debt fiasco. Instead, he was hanged a week after the shot was fired.

The government was deeply unpopular with the general public at the time, largely due to rising prices caused by the ongoing war with France. According to the National Archives, troops had to be called in to escort Bellingham to prison out of fear a mob delighted with the death of the PM could help him escape.

Perceval was succeeded by the slightly more notable Earl of Liverpool, who stayed in power for a 15-year stretch that included war with the United States and the Peterloo massacre.

Two reminders of the extraordinary assassination remain in parliament today. One is a plaque memorialising Perceval, which was placed in St Stephen’s Hall ten years ago.

And the other is a man who has sat in the House of Lords since 2020 after serving as an MP for a total of 32 years, and who claims ancestry to an ex-Russian convict with a mammoth chip on his shoulder: Henry Bellingham, Baron Bellingham.

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