If it wasn’t for one incident, it would be unlikely
that most of us would have even heard of Spencer Perceval. If I were to tell
you that he held office between the 3rd Duke of Portland and the 2nd
Earl of Liverpool, you’d be right to guess that he was a British Prime
Minister, but if you said you can you name one thing that any one of those
three ever achieved, I’d say you were either a student of political history or
a liar (which is not necessarily a mutually exclusive position). Spencer
Perceval, however, is remembered as being the only British Prime Minister to
have been assassinated, (and considering some of those who have held that
position, that’s something of a surprise in itself).
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| Spencer Perceval |
Late in the afternoon of
May 11th 1812, Perceval left Downing Street and walked down
Parliament Street, on his way to the chamber of the House of Commons, where
debates in Committee on the Orders in Council were taking place. At about a
quarter past five, as he ascended the broad steps leading to the folding
half-doors of the lobby, he noticed William Jerdan, an up-and-coming
parliamentary correspondent and, having a slight acquaintance, the pair smiled
briefly to each other. The young journalist held the door open, to allow the
Prime Minister to precede him into the Commons.
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| "As if the breath of a cigar" |
As Perceval passed through the
door, a tall, young man in a snuff-coloured suit approached him and Jerdan
noticed a curl of smoke, ‘as if the breath of a cigar’, wreath above the
politician’s head. A stunned Perceval reeled back momentarily against the ledge
of the door and Jerdan heard him gasp, “Oh, God”, or “Oh, my God”,
before he staggered forward, seeming almost to be dashing for the safety of the
door on the other side of the lobby, but half way across it he dropped to the
floor. A faint trace of blood issued from his mouth. Mr William Smith, MP for
Norwich, stepped forward and raised the stricken man up in his arms, it was
only then that he recognised him as the Prime Minister.
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| Perceval perishes |
He was carried into the
adjoining office of the Speaker’s Secretary and laid upon a table. Back in the
lobby, there was pandemonium. One of the officers of the House called out, “That
is the murderer,” pointing to the man in the snuff-coloured suit who, with
a small pistol still in his hand, slowly sank onto a bench near the fire-place,
where Jerdan walked up to him and took hold, without violence, of the collar of
his coat. Another officer cried, “Where is the rascal that fired?” to
which the man quietly answered, “I am the unfortunate man.”
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| William Jerdan |
General
Gascoigne seized him so strongly that he said later that he feared his arm was
being broken; other members and bystanders searched his pockets and found a
second pistol, an opera glass and some papers. Meanwhile, in the Secretary’s
office, an unconscious Perceval was still laid on the table. A doctor had been
sent for, but it was in vain, as he was already dead. The bullet, fired at
height by a tall man and entering at an angle, had pierced the chest and
entered the heart. Some one came out into the lobby and said directly to the assassin,
“Mr Perceval is dead. Villain, how could you destroy so good a man, and make
a family of twelve children orphans?" “I am sorry for it,” came the
almost mournful reply.
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| William Jerdan - Autobiography - 1825 |
Jerdan, writing in his autobiography later, describes
the man as physically strong but shaking almost uncontrollably, speaking coolly
and quietly, yet sweating so profusely that it ran down his face and dripped
onto his clothing. It seemed that he was almost choking and he struck himself
in the chest several times, as if trying to dislodge something that was rising
into his gorge. When he spoke, he was incoherent, and seemed to be saying
something about injustices that he had suffered.
The doors were locked and
bolted and a search for accomplices was undertaken but no one else was discovered.
The man, it seemed, had been acting alone. He was taken to the bar of the
House, where a Middlesex magistrate committed him to be held in the prison room
of the Serjeant at Arms, and then to be taken to Newgate, secretly taken out
through the Speaker’s entrance and under guard by a company of Life Guards. A
watch was placed on him, to prevent any attempt at suicide. Jerdan had been so
close to Perceval that had the pistol ball passed through the body it would
have entered his own yet, he wrote he did not hear the sound of a shot.
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| Spencer Perceval |
In the
Commons and the Lords, however, the report was heard resounding through both
Houses, and members from both ran out, to discover that the Prime Minister had
died within ten minutes of being shot. The body was taken, first, to the
Speaker’s House and then, later on the morning of the following day, to Number
10, Downing Street. He left a wife and twelve children, aged between three and
twenty, and had just over one hundred pounds in his bank account. Parliament
voted to settle £50,000 on the children, with additional annuities for the
widow and the eldest son. At the family’s request, he was buried in a private
service. A memorial was placed in Westminster Abbey, at a cost of £5,250.
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| Perceval's memorial |
I
make no comment on the current situation of the recent passing of former Prime
Minister, her public funeral and a proposed memorial. No, no comment at all.
Tomorrow – who shot him and why.
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