Britain’s only serving PM to be assassinated was Spencer Perceval, aged 49, shot though the chest on 11 May 1812. His killer, John Bellingham, an aggrieved merchant, was executed for the offence but only after his defence team had failed to secure the insanity plea. Judge Mansfield ordered the jury at his trial, held a meagre 4 days after the event, to entertain mitigation only on the 'distinct and unquestionable evidence that the prisoner was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong', a thorny issue at the heart of C19 debates about madness and crime. He added that it excused murder in any case only if the accused had suffered such weakness at the time of the act. ‘An insanity born of some imagined affront was no legal defence - no matter how strongly deranged’. Bellingham had it seemed planned the attack, blaming the Government for failing to secure him compensation after he was imprisoned in Russia some years before and now seeking revenge. He had bought two pistols before the attack, but his sense & reasoning were exposed as deeply flawed. He was hanged with unseemly haste on 18 May, 3 days later lest minds once again turned to compassion. Many lamented ‘one of the darkest passages in the grim history of English law'. Spencer Perceval, his innocent victim, was laid to rest the day after, leaving a widow and 12 children.
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