Activists are trying to preserve the prison he was sent to after his conviction for “indecency,” saying his life is an important part of Britain’s history.
‘You Feel Goose Bumps’: The Push to Preserve Where Wilde Was Jailed for Being Gay
Activists are trying to preserve the prison he was sent to after his conviction for “indecency,” saying his life is an important part of Britain’s history.
The perimeter wall, right, of the now closed Victorian jail where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated in 1895 on a charge of “gross indecency.” The ancient Reading Abbey is on the left.Credit.Mary Turner for The New York Times
June 1, 2021Updated 4:32 p.m. ET
READING, England -The metal stairway creaks and groans underfoot on the way to cell C. 3.3, a bare oblong room of painted brick behind a large and forbidding prison door.
BBC News
By Damon Quinn
Did Edward Carson destroy Oscar Wilde?
In a new documentary set to screen on BBC NI, Wilde s grandson Merlin Holland asks if Carson deserves the reputation as the man who took down his grandfather.
In 1895, Wilde fought a duel in court with a lawyer who he had once called an old friend .
The lawyer was Carson, a fellow Dubliner Wilde knew from Trinity College Dublin, and it was the most scandalous case of Victorian times.
It ended in Wilde s ruin and led to his imprisonment for his homosexuality, which was a criminal offence in Britain until 1967.