NOTED DIPLOMAT

Evening Post, Volume cxxiv, Issue 148, 20 December 1937, Page 11

NOTED DIPLOMAT

MR. R. W. BINGHAM DEAD-

AMBASSADOR IN LONDON

VALUED SERVICE

(United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) BALTIMORE, December 18. The United States Ambassador to Great Britain, Mr. R. W. Bingham, whose pending resignation was announced by the "New York Times" recently, died in the Johns Hopkins Hospital after an operation. <

Mr. R. W. Bingham was appointed to the post of United States Ambassador at the Court of St. James in 1933 and previously had a distinguished career in public affairs. He was born in North Carolina in 1871 and his early career was in'law where he met with great success. In 1918 he acquired the ownership of the "Louisville CourierJournal" and the "Louisville Times." He graduated at the Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, and the University of North Carolina, and held degrees also from the University of Virginia and the University of Louisville. He was a trustee of Berea and Centre Colleges and a member of the American, Kentucky, and Louisville Bar Associations.

Mr. Bingham was a former president of the Southern Commercial Congress and in 1923 was chairman of the executive committee of the National Council of Co-operative Marketing Associa-

tions in the United States. He received the congratulations of the Kentucky House of Representatives for his organisation of the Burley Tobacco Growers' Marketing .- Association and the Dark Tobacco Growers' Marketing Association. - Mr. Bingham was a director of the American Creosoting Company, the Liberty Bank and Trust Company, and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. From 1904 to 1907 he was attorney of Jefferson County, Kentucky, and in 1907 he became Mayor of Louisville. In 1911 he became Chancellor of the: Jefferson County Circuit Court. !

Mr. Birighani married three times. His first wife was Eleanor E. Miller, of Louisville, whom he married in 1896. She was killed in an automobile accident. His second wife was Mrs. Mary Lily Flagler, widow of Henry M. Flagler. She died in 1917,-a year after their marriage, leaving Mr. Bingham £1,000,000 of her £14,000,000 fortune. In 1924 Mr. Bingham married Mrs. Byron Hilliard, the former Alene Muldoon, daughter of an old Kentucky family. The marriage took place in London.

When appointed to London he was no stranger to Court circles. He counted many personal friends among the political leaders in both Houses of Parliament. He had been their guest at times and several of them visited the Bingham country home perched on the Ohio River cliffs above Louisville.

A Democrat by inheritance, he usually remained regular in national politics, but he never failed to embrace and support, in local or State affairs, the candidature of those individuals or that party which stood for things honest and clean.

His frequent visits and lengthy sojourns in the land of his ■ forbears gave him a remarkable insight into the affairs of Great Britain, especially with relation to those of the United States. He spent so much of his time in England that probably few men in his position were so intimately acquainted with the problems, the temperament, and the viewpoints of the British people.

One of Mr. Bingham's closest friends among the British men of affairs was Viscount Cecil of Chelwood. This ardent friend of international peace and world democracy was Mr. Bingham's guest in Louisville 15 years ago. The views of these two men were identical in many respects.

But if the former Ambassador's friendship for the great Conservative was marked, so was it for the former Liberal Prime Minister, Mr. David Lloyd George, who, with his daughter, likewise were the Bingham family's guests during the Welsh statesman's tour of the U.S.A.