May 25, 1895: Oscar Wilde Is Convicted

May 25, 1895: Oscar Wilde is convicted of "gross indecency," and sentenced to 2 years in prison, at hard labor. It concludes one of the most shocking scandals of Victorian Britain.

Born in Dublin, Ireland (then ruled by Britain) on October 16, 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was a child of intellectuals, and excelled at Dublin's Trinity College, and then at Oxford University. He began publishing poetry in the 1880s, allowing him to move in London's fashionable circles.

He published his first collection of poems in 1881. Critics didn't like it: A reviewer in the popular magazine Punch wrote, "The poet is Wilde, but his poetry's tame." But it sold well, and he became a popular lecturer, discussing literature, art and fashion.

In 1882, he was hired for a lecture tour in America. He proved popular here as well, although his eccentricities did not please everyone. This was reflected in a 1958 episode of the TV Western Have Gun -- Will Travel, in which Wilde, incorrectly referred to as an Englishman, was played by Australian actor John O'Malley.

In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd. They had 2 sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. This may come as a surprise to people who only know Oscar for one thing: The reason for his trial. At any rate, Constance also became a published author: In 1888, she published There Once Was, a collection of children's stories she'd heard from her grandmother. Vyvyan went on to write a memoir, and said that, while Oscar was a loving father, he was often an absent husband.

In 1886, having been completely turned by his wife's back-to-back pregnancies, Oscar met Robert Ross, who was 17 (to Oscar's 31), and, as one account politely put it, "seemed unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality." To put it in modern terms, he was not afraid to be his true self, and Oscar fell for him. Ross became a journalist, and, while his affair with Wilde did not last, they remained friends for the rest of Wilde's life.

It may have been that Oscar's personality was already, to use the stereotype so often used for gay men in 20th Century America, "flamboyant." But Ross' example may have inspired him to do what some such men, like Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde, would later do: Come as close as he could to advertising his gayness, without actually saying the words.

In 1890, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine began serializing his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. It told of a man who saw a painting of himself as a handsome young man, and he wished he could be that young and handsome forever. He begins to do rotten things, and every time he does, he stays the same, while his portrait begins to look meaner and older. Within 20 years, he's still young, while his portrait looks like a nasty old man. The story made Wilde a legend. It was published as a full novel in 1891.

He turned to writing plays: Lady Windermere's Fan was staged in 1892, A Woman of No Importance in 1893, and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. At the age of 40, he was one of the most popular writers in the English language.

And he loved being a celebrity. Among the many witty sayings attributed to him is this: "There is one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

In 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred Douglas. He was 20 years old, a student at Oxford, and the son of John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry. A boxing and horse racing enthusiast, he is best known as the sponsor of the modern rules of boxing, known as "The Marquess of Queensberry Rules." In fact, he didn't write them: A Welsh rowing champion named John Graham Chambers did, in 1867. So the Marquess was a fraud, and if there is a hero in the story about to be told, he is not it.

The relationship between Oscar and Lord Alfred was stormy, a real "Can't live with you, can't live without you" affair. When the Marquess found out, he wrote to Lord Alfred and threatened to disown him. He threatened to "make a public scandal in a way you little dream of." Alfred wrote back, saying, "I detest you," and that if it came down to a fight between his father and Oscar, he would take Oscar's side "with a loaded revolver."

In 1894, Lord Alfred's eldest brother, Francis, Viscount Drumlanrig, who stood to become the 10th Marquess, died in what was ruled a hunting accident. There was a rumor that he, too, was in a gay relationship -- with, of all people, the man to whom he was private secretary, Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain. (Rosebery was a widower, with 4 children, and the rumor probably wasn't true.) There was another brother older than Lord Alfred, who would now inherit the title. But the current Marquess was more determined than ever to save his living wayward son.

The Marquess visited Oscar at his home, and said, "I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant, I will thrash you." Oscar was unfazed: "I don't know what the Queensberry Rules are, but the Oscar Wilde Rule is to shoot on sight." Had it come to that, Oscar could have claimed self-defense, and, of the two, probably would have emerged with the less-damaged reputation.

It did not come to that. What it came to was this: On February 18, 1895, the Marquess arrived at the Albemarle Club in London, demanding to see Oscar. He was denied entrance. So he left a calling card, on which he had scrawled "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite." He meant "sodomite." This was a public accusation that Wilde had engaged in homosexual acts -- which, at the time, were criminally prohibited in Britain.

Oscar had 2 choices: Take the advice of his friends, and try to make a deal with prosecutors, take whatever legal punishment and public humiliation may come, and then try to rebuild his life and reputation; or take the advice of Lord Alfred, and sue the Marquess for libel -- essentially, lie about the Marquess being a liar, piling a libel of his own on top of what he was already accused of, which would compound his punishment should he lose the case.

Some friends, including Robert Ross, recommended that Oscar flee to France to avoid the British legal system completely. Instead, he sued the Marquess for libel, and the Marquess was arrested. Had he been convicted, he would have spent up to 2 years in prison. He could avoid conviction only by proving two things: That his accusation of Oscar was true, and that there was "public benefit" to openly making the accusation.

Wilde v. Queensberry opened at the Old Bailey, the central court of London, on April 3. The Marquess' lawyers had in their possession several letters from Oscar to Lord Alfred. Oscar insisted that the letters were works of art, rather than genuine love letters. His testimony made court spectators laugh, but undermined his case. He ended up admitting this on the stand to the Marquess' lawyer, Edward Carson, a fellow Dubliner whom he'd known at Trinity College: "You sting me and insult me, and try to unnerve me. And, at times, one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously."

When Oscar's lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke, rested his case, Carson began his by announcing that he had located "several" male prostitutes who were to testify -- presumably, having been granted immunity from prosecution -- that Oscar was a customer of theirs. Oscar knew the case was lost. He dropped it. Thus, he was now not only open to prosecution for sodomy, but legally liable for the Marquess' legal costs. He was now bankrupt.

Again, Ross and others told him to get on a train for Dover, and then on a ferry across the English Channel, and into France, where he would not be extradited. His mother told him to stay and fight. He stayed. On April 6, just 3 days after the original trial began, he was arrested for, in the legal terms of the time, "gross indecency."

Regina v. Wilde -- "Regina" being Latin for "Queen," thus implying that the federal government was acting in the name of Queen Victoria herself -- began on April 26. Again, Oscar's ego, his sense that he was superior to those charging him, led him to undermine his own case with his testimony. It was revealed that one of the prostitutes he hired was only 16 -- and Oscar was 40. By that day's standards, he was the world's most famous gay person; by today's standards, he would have been "canceled" for taking a 16-year-old as a sex partner, regardless of gender. On May 25, he was convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison at hard labor.

He was taken to Pentonville Prison in North London, where his "hard labour" was separating the fibers in scraps of old navy ropes. After a few months, he was taken to Wandsworth Prison in South London. He found the food there terrible, and stopped eating. In November 1895, in the prison chapel, he collapsed, the fall rupturing his right eardrum.

He was transferred to Reading Gaol (pronounced like "Redding Jail"), in Reading, Berkshire, west of London. His witness of the treatment of Charles Woolridge, a former soldier convicted and hanged for murdering his wife, led Wilde (after being released) to write the The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Toward the end of his sentence, he wrote Lord Alfred a 50,000-word letter, ostensibly telling of what he'd learned, but ultimately showing that he'd learned very little. After his death, this letter would be published as De Profundis.

He was released on May 19, 1897, and finally got on a train for the coast and a ferry to France. He never returned to any place that was under British law. He had locked the barn door after the horse had already been turned into glue.

He reunited with Ross, and even briefly with Lord Alfred. Lord Alfred finally dumped Oscar for good, under the threat of being cut off financially, which finally worked, as it did not in 1894. Ross stayed with him, as loyal friend though not as lover, until the end.

The end was poverty and illness. He admitted, "I can write, but have lost the joy of writing," and, noting that his drinking wasn't helping matters, said, "I am dying beyond my means." On November 30, 1900, Oscar Wilde died of meningitis at his home in Paris. He was 46 years old.

He was buried in Paris' famed Père Lachaise Cemetery, also the final home of writers Molière, Honoré de Balzac, Colette, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and Richard Wright; composer Georges Bizet; painters Eugène Delacroix and Georges-Pierre Seurat; actor Yves Montand, actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Simone Signoret; early filmmaker Georges Méliès; mime Marcel Marceau; dancer Isadora Duncan; singer Édith Piaf, and Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors. As with Morrison, Oscar Wilde's tomb has been so besieged by fans that is now guarded by a glass case.

Robert Ross became Oscar's literary executor, and had the unenviable task of determining which of the works with Oscar's name on it -- some of them salacious even beyond what Oscar would have written himself -- were real, and which were fakes riding his name. He died in 1918, although it appears his death had nothing to do with World War I. It may have been due to the worldwide influenza epidemic. His ashes were scattered on Wilde's tomb.

The Marquess of Queensberry died in 1900, 10 months before Oscar, at the not-so-old age of 55. If Oscar had any reaction to this, it has never been publicly revealed. The Marquess' eldest son, Percy Douglas, became the 10th Marquess. On December 19, 2021, Percy's grandson, David Douglas, the 12th Marquess of Queensberry, celebrated his 91st birthday.

Lord Alfred Douglas did what he could to distance himself from Oscar Wilde. He married, had a son, and converted to Roman Catholicism. He repudiated homosexuality -- having given it the epigram "the love that dare not speak its name," a phrase Wilde was challenged to explain in his trial -- and expressed anti-Semitic views.

With some irony, he went to prison for libel, over claims of misconduct in World War I by a young Cabinet official named Winston Churchill. He died in 1945. His son, mentally ill, died while committed in 1964, thus ending Lord Alfred's genetic line, if not that of the Douglases/Queensberrys.

Although they never divorced, to protect her sons from the fallout from Oscar's scandal, Constance changed her last name, and their sons', to Holland. Oscar never saw any of them again. Constance ended up predeceasing her husband, dying in 1898, from causes that are still questioned, but could have been the result of a botched surgery to correct a related condition. 

Captain Cyril Holland was killed in action in World War I, at the Second Battle of Artois in France on May 9, 1915. He was just short of turning 30, never married, and is not known to have had any children. Vyvyan Holland became a lawyer, and wrote poetry and short stories like his father. His first marriage only lasted 5 years, because his wife died in a fire.

In 1943, he married again, and lived until 1967. Oscar's only grandchild was born in 1945: Merlin Holland got his professional start writing about his grandfather, and doing what he could to restore his reputations, literary and social. He has also written on other subjects, mostly for magazines. He lives in Burgundy, France, with his 2nd wife. With his 1st wife, he continued the family line: Oscar's great-grandson, Lucian Holland, was born in 1979, and is a computer programmer living in London.

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May 25, 1895 was a Saturday. An ocean removed from the proceedings against Oscar Wilde, these games were played in baseball's National League:

* The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Spiders, 11-8 at League Park in Cleveland. The most familiar version of League Park was built on the same site in 1910.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Louisville Colonels, 9-7 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. The Dodgers-to-be took the "Bridegrooms" name after several players got married in the 1887-88 off-season.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Beaneaters, 1-0 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The Beaneaters would go through a few name changes before adopting "Braves" in 1912.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-4 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago Colts beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-3 at West Side Park in Chicago. Despite this, the Orioles went on to win the Pennant. In 1903, the Colts took the name by which they have been known ever since: The Chicago Cubs.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Both of these teams would later have American League teams named after them. The NL Senators folded after the 1899 season, as did the NL Orioles, the Spiders and the Colonels. The NL Browns became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900. The most familiar version of Sportsman's Park was built on the same site in 1909.

This was also the birthdate of Dorothea Lange, the photographer famous for her 1936 Migrant Mother photo that became one of the familiar images of the Great Depression.