THE DEATH OF MR PERCEVAL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3127, 6 July 1881, Page 3

THE DEATH OF MR PERCEVAL.

On the afternoon of Monday, the 11th of May, as tho Minister was entering the House about 5 o'clock, a man of gentlemanly appearance presented a pistol and shot him dead—at least, he did not survive two minutes. In the confusion and consternation the man might have escaped, but he madß no such attempt; he walked up to the fireplace, laid down his pistol on a bench, and said, in answer to those inquiring after the murderer, that he was the person. He gave his name as Bellinghain, expressed satisfaction at the deed, but said he should have been more pleased had it been Lord Leveson Gower. In fact, his prime intention ■was to shoot Lord Gower ; but he had also his resentment against Perceval, and therefore took the opportunity of securing one of his victims. It appeared that ho had been a Liverpool merchant, trading to Russia, and that during the embassage of Lord Leveson Gower at St. Petersburg he had suffered severe and t as he deemed, unjust losses, for assistance in the redress of which with the Russian Government he had in Train sought the good offices of the ambassador. On his return to England he had applied to Perceval; but that Minister did not deem it a case in which the Government could interfere, and hence the exasperation of the unhappy man against both these diplomatists. The trial of the murderer came on at the Old Bailey, before ChiefJustice Mansfield, on the Friday of the same week. A plea of insanity was put in by Bellingham's counsel, and a demand that the trial should be postponed till inquiries could be made at Liverpool as to his antecedents. But this plea, with the hard and unconceding spirit of the times, was overruled. Bellingham himself, as is the case with most madmen, indignantly rejected the of his being insane.—Cassell's Illus&%ti^.JSsmM . i; . V;V Englan^ ; ..„ , , ' v iiijf-25 , «'1 ,, A r> '"" '.'Mj hi'.-.t « irri ii .>■■