Recollections of family and friends show that Bellingham was born in St Neots, Huntingdonshire,[1] and brought up in London, where he was apprenticed to a jeweller, James Love, aged fourteen.

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.

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.

[clarification needed] Bellingham, about to return from Russia to Britain on 16 November 1804, had his travelling pass withdrawn because of the alleged debt.

John Bellingham was tried on Friday 15 May 1812 at the Old Bailey, where he argued that he would have preferred to shoot the British ambassador to Russia, but insisted as a wronged man he was justified in killing the representative of his oppressors.

Recollect that my family was ruined and myself destroyed, merely because it was Mr Perceval's pleasure that justice should not be granted; sheltering himself behind the imagined security of his station, and trampling upon law and right in the belief that no retribution could reach him.

I trust that this serious lesson will operate as a warning to all future ministers, and that they will henceforth do the thing that is right, for if the upper ranks of society are permitted to act wrong with impunity, the inferior ramifications will soon become wholly corrupted.

Gentlemen, my life is in your hands, I rely confidently in your justice.Evidence was presented that Bellingham was insane, but it was discounted by the trial judge, Sir James Mansfield.

René Martin Pillet [fr], a Frenchman who wrote an account of his ten years in England, described the sentiment of the crowd at the execution: Farewell poor man, you owe satisfaction to the offended laws of your country, but God bless you!