THE SUICIDE OF JUDGE RICHARD REID. POLITICS AND HONOR RUN AMOK.

pp123-145. Removed from FILSON CLUB HISTORY QUARTERLY, Vol 71, No. 2, April, 1997. In report covers. VG. May include a first or last copied page. In May of 1884, Richard Reid, age 46, judge of the Kentucky Superior Court and candidate for Court of Appeals shot himself. What led to his suicide was a complicated affair involving an assault against him by a fellow member of the bar, John J. Cornelison. Cornelison had attacked Reid with a cane and a whip. The so called code of honor in those days demanded that the aggrieved party had the right, actually the obligation, to defend himself to the death, or if unable to do so, at the earliest possible moment to seek out the attacker and attempt to kill him. Whipping was considered an especially degrading form of attack, it having been used in the punishment of slaves. Reid's refusal to seek vengeance caused a great deal of controversy, pro and con. Although the Reid-Cornelison affair did not signal the end of the era of the code of honor, it caused a major reassessment of the tradition that had claimed so many lives.…