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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.〔 〕 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 Eleanor Miller died in 1913, survived by three children: Robert Norwood Bingham (his middle name was later changed to Worth, making him Robert Worth Bingham Jr), George Barry Bingham, and Henrietta Worth Bingham. 〔Robert Worth Bingham and the Southern Mystique, William Elliot Ellis, The Kent State University Press, 1997, pg 53〕 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. Nevertheless, as Bingham inherited $5 million after her death, enabling him to purchase ''The Courier-Journal'' and ''The 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.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Worth Bingham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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