Robert Worth Bingham

Robert Worth Bingham (November 8, 1871 – December 18, 1937) was a politician, judge, newspaper publisher and United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He attended the University of North Carolina and University of Virginia but did not graduate. He moved to Louisville in the 1890s and received a law degree from the University of Louisville in 1897. He formed his own practice with W.W. Davies.

Bingham married into a wealthy family in 1896. He became involved in Louisville politics as a registered Democrat, and was appointed interim mayor of the city in 1907 after election fraud invalidated the 1905 election.^[1] His corruption-busting tactics in his 6-month term alienated him from the local political machine and the Democratic Party in general, and he chose not to run in the general election.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1910 as a Republican, and as a Democrat for Fiscal Court in 1917. He was appointed to the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1911 and was known as "Judge Bingham" for the rest of his life.

Controversial inheritance

Bingham's first wife died in 1913. In 1916 he married Mary Lily Flagler, reputedly the wealthiest woman in America at the time and widow of Henry Morrison Flagler. She died within a year, and although there was never any evidence of it, Bingham's enemies would long claim he was somehow to blame for her death. As the family business crumbled publicly in the 1980s, several biographers, most notably David Leon Chandler, claimed Bingham had killed his wife for the money, either by overdose or withholding medical care. While acknowledging these theories were at least plausible, more mainstream sources, from the Filson Club's respected quarterly publication to the New York Times, dismissed the allegations as impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.^[2][3]

Nevertheless, as Bingham inherited $5 million after her death, enabling him to purchase the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, which became critical in establishing his later national prominence, it made an attractive conspiracy theory. Bingham's son, Barry Bingham, Sr., argued that Flagler was an alcoholic who drank herself to death, a theory supported by an affidavit from her family doctor given in 1933.^[2]

Later career

Using the bequest from Flagler, Bingham purchased the Courier-Journal and Times in 1918. He immediately clashed with legendary long-time editor Henry Watterson, who soon retired. In the 1920s Bingham used the paper to push for farm cooperatives, improve education and support of the rural poor, and to challenge the state's Democratic Party bosses. In the latter endeavor he became an ally of Governor J. C. W. Beckham. Bingham himself was, earlier in his career, discouraged from running for mayor due to the likelihood of heavy opposition from the likes of Democratic party boss John Whallen, and had bitterly described the unfairness of machine tactics he witnessed used against other candidates.

Bingham married his third wife, Aleen Lithgow Hilliard, in 1924. A strong financial backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bingham was awarded with ambassadorship to Great Britain in 1933. As ambassador, Bingham pushed for stronger ties between the United States and Great Britain, and vocally opposed the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, a time when Roosevelt would not because of political concerns at home. He was succeeded in the post by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr..

His daughter Henrietta Bingham fell in with the Bloomsbury Group, having affairs with the painter Dora Carrington and later with the sculptor Stephen Tomlin, who went on to marry Julia Strachey, niece of Lytton Strachey, the love of Carrington's life.^[4] He died in 1937 and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery. His family continued to dominate Louisville media for another half-century, mostly through his son, Barry Bingham, Sr. The SS Robert W. Bingham, a cargo ship in service from 1944 to 1959, was named for him.

See Also

St Mary's Church, Wilton

References

Further reading

• Chandler, David Leon (1989). Binghams of Louisville : The Dark History Behind One of America's Great Fortunes. New York: Crown. ISBN 0517568950. 
• Ellis, William E. (1997). Robert Worth Bingham and the Southern Mystique: From the Old South to the New South and Beyond. 
• Thomas, Samuel W. (1993). Barry Bingham: A Man of his Word. 
• Ellis, William E. (January 1982). "Robert Worth Bingham and the Crisis of Cooperative Marketing in the Twenties". Agricultural History 56: 99–116.