John Bellingham

John Bellingham
Portrait of John Bellingham
Born	c. 1769 St Neots, Huntingdonshire
Died	May 18, 1812(1812-05-18) London
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Known for	Assassinating Spencer Perceval

John Bellingham (c. 1769 – 18 May 1812) was the assassin of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. This murder is the only assassination of a British Prime Minister.

Bellingham's early life is largely unknown, and most post-assassination biographies included speculation as fact. Recollections of family and friends show that Bellingham was born in St Neots, Huntingdonshire, and brought up in London, where he was apprenticed to a jeweller, James Love, at age fourteen. Two years later, he went as a midshipman on the maiden voyage of the Hartwell from Gravesend to China. A mutiny took place on 22 May 1787, which led to the ship running aground and sinking.

In early 1794, a man named John Bellingham opened a tin factory on London's Oxford Street, but it failed and the owner was declared bankrupt in March. It is not certain this is he, but Bellingham definitely worked as a clerk in a counting house in the late 1790s, and about 1800 he went to Arkhangelsk, Russia, as an agent for importers and exporters. He returned to England in 1802 and was a merchant broker in Liverpool. He married Mary Neville in 1803. In the summer of 1804, Bellingham again went to Arkhangelsk to work as an export representative.

In autumn 1803, the Russian ship Soleure (or sometimes "Sojus"), insured at Lloyd's of London, had been lost in the White Sea. Her owners (the house of R. Van Brienen) filed a claim on their insurance, but an anonymous letter told Lloyd's the ship had been sabotaged. Soloman Van Brienen believed Bellingham was the author, and retaliated by accusing him of a debt of 4,890 roubles to a bankruptcy of which he was an assignee. Bellingham, about to return from Russia to Britain on 16 November 1804, had his travelling pass withdrawn because of the alleged debt.