JOHN BELLINGHAM - The Liverpool Assassin By Margaret Brecknell
Spencer Perceval 1812 Drawing by Charles Turner – Yale Center for British Art/CC0
Details of Bellingham’s early life remain largely unknown, but he is thought to have been born around 1771 and to have spent much of his childhood in the Cambridgeshire town of St Neots. His mother, Elizabeth, came from a well-to-do local family, while his father, John, was a land surveyor and artist from London, who, towards the end of his life, is believed to have suffered from serious mental health problems. One account of Bellingham’s life, which appeared in James Stonehouse’s Recollections of Old Liverpool by a Nonagenarian, portrayed him as a troublesome teenager, who, at the age of 14, was apprenticed to a London jeweller, but ran away “after giving much trouble and annoyance”. His mother, by then a single parent, turned for assistance to her brotherin-law, a prosperous barrister called William Daw, who managed to find the young Bellingham a position as an officer cadet on board a ship which was about to set sail for China. During its voyage the vessel was wrecked off the coast of Cape Verde and Bellingham was fortunate to make it home safely.
One of the most shocking crimes in UK history occurred 210 years ago, on 11th May 1812, when the then Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was shot dead in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament. 112
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erceval is now best remembered for being the only UK Prime Minister ever to be assassinated. The name of his assailant, John Bellingham, a merchant broker from Liverpool, has, however, been largely forgotten, as have the events that led him to carry out such a shockingly violent act.
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
Daw was again asked to intervene and next helped him to set up as a tin-plate worker on Oxford Street in London. Once more, matters do not appear to have run smoothly for Bellingham. A bankruptcy notice regarding an Oxford Street “tin-plate worker and dealer” called John Bellingham, which appeared in The London Gazette in March 1794, is very likely to relate to him. Subsequently, Bellingham found work as a bookkeeper in London and eventually was sent to work as the firm’s representative in the northerly Russian port of Archangel. www.lancmag.com
