Robert Worth Bingham - Later Career

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..

He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, Society of Colonial Wars and the Sons of the American Revolution.

His daughter Henrietta Bingham was involved 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. 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.