After a sensational series of trials, playwright Oscar Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency under British law criminalizing homosexual acts and sentenced to two years of hard labor. The conviction destroyed his reputation and finances, and his health never recovered from the harsh conditions of Reading Gaol, where he wrote 'De Profundis.' He died three years after his release.
Oscar Wilde was, in early 1895, the most celebrated wit in the English-speaking world, with two plays running simultaneously in London's West End. By late May, he was a convicted criminal sentenced to hard labor. The catastrophe began when Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel after the marquess accused him of homosexuality in connection with his relationship with the marquess's son, Lord Alfred Douglas.
The libel case collapsed spectacularly and exposed Wilde to prosecution himself. In the subsequent criminal trials, prosecutors read aloud from his private letters and cross-examined him about his associations with young working-class men. Wilde's famous defense of 'the love that dare not speak its name' as a Platonic ideal failed to sway the jury.
On May 25, 1895, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to the maximum two years' hard labor. The physical toll of prison — the treadmill, the poor diet, an injury from a fall in the chapel — broke his once-robust health. He emerged in 1897 a ruined man, wrote the anguished prison memoir 'De Profundis,' and died in Paris in 1900, only 46 years old.
Key people: Oscar Wilde, Marquess of Queensberry, Lord Alfred Douglas