Famous Trials: Oscar Wilde

Famous Trials #7

by H. Montgomery Hyde (Editor)

The Marquess, a brutish man known for creating the rules of modern boxing, was profoundly displeased by Oscar Wilde's relatively public affair (and loving, intimate friendship) with his good-looking son, the 16-years younger Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. In 1895, he left a card at Wilde's club on which he had written, "To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite" [sic]. Wilde was offended, and, in what would turn out to be a horrible mistake, had the Marquess arrested for libel. Ten years earlier, the criminal code had been updated to outlaw "gross indecency." To that point, indecent acts between men in private were not prosecutable. In 1885 they became so. The Marquess's libel trial had the unfortunate result, with Wilde trying to disprove he was posing as a sodomite, of introducing the testimony of various young men with whom Wilde had allegedly had sexual relations. When it became clear to Wilde's solicitors that he could not win the prosecution of the Marquess, they abandoned it and the Marquess was found not guilty. At this point Wilde's friends, including his wife, urged him to flee England for the Continent. But Wilde dithered, and an arrest warrant was issued for him based on the acts of gross indecency brought up by the libel trial. He was soon in prison, and on trial with a co-defendant, Alfred Taylor, who was also accused of procuring young men for Wilde.

Genres: Law

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Harford Montgomery Hyde was born on 14 August 1907 in Belfast, the son of James Johnstone Hyde and Isobel Greenfield (née Montgomery). He was educated at Sedbergh School; Queen's University, Belfast (where he gained a first class History degree); then at Magdalen College Oxford (where he gained a second class law degree). He was called to the bar in 1934. From 1935-1939, Hyde was librarian and Private Secretary to the 7th Marquess of Londonderry. In 1939 he married Dorothy Mabel Brayshaw Crofts (divorced 1952).

During World War II, Hyde held several positions. He served as an Assistant Censor in Gibraltar (1940) and was commissioned in the intelligence corps and engaged in counter-espionage work in the United States under Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Co-ordination in the Western Hemisphere (whose life Hyde published as "The Quiet Canadian" in 1962). He was also Military Liaison and Security Officer, Bermuda (1940-41); Assistant Passport Control Officer, New York (1941-2); with British Army Staff, USA (1942-4); attached to the Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force (1944) and then to the Allied Commission for Austria (1944-5).

Hyde was the Assistant Editor of the Law Reports (1946-7), then Legal Adviser to the British Lion Film Corporation Ltd (1947-9). From 1950-59 he was a Unionist MP for East Belfast and was the UK Delegate to the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly in Strasbourg (1952-5). From 1958-61 Hyde was an Honorary Colonel of the Intelligence Corps (Territorial Army), Northern Ireland. After losing his parliamentary seat, Hyde was Professor of History and Political Science at the University of the Punjab in Lahore (1959-61).

In 1955, Hyde married his second wife Mary Eleanor Fischer. The marriage was dissolved in 1966 and he married Rosalind Roberts Dimond. He died on August 10 1989.

Hyde wrote a great many books on a wide variety of subjects including "The Rise of Castlereagh" (1933); "The Quiet Canadian" (1962); "Cynthia" (1962) and "Secret Intelligence Agent" (1982).

The held at Churchill Archives Centre chiefly consist of the papers and letters Montgomery Hyde collected and generated in the course of writing three of his books: "The Quiet Canadian" (a biography of Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Co-ordination in the Western Hemisphere, 1940-46); "Cynthia" (a biography of the British agent Elizabeth (Pack) Brousse); and "Secret Intelligence Agent" (which included descriptions of his own wartime experiences). The collection also includes papers and letters relating to Hyde's work in Censorship and Security in Gibraltar, Bermuda and the USA during the Second World War; and in the legal division of the Allied Control Commission in Austria.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Oscar Wilde, destroyed by a 10-year old Victorian law and his evil nemesis the Marquess of Queensberry.

The Marquess, a brutish man known for creating the rules of modern boxing, was profoundly displeased by Oscar Wilde's relatively public affair (and loving, intimate friendship) with his good-looking son, the 16-years younger Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. In 1895, he left a card at Wilde's club on which he had written, "To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite" [sic]. Wilde was offended, and, in what would turn out to be a horrible mistake, had the Marquess arrested for libel.

Ten years earlier, the criminal code had been updated to outlaw "gross indecency." To that point, indecent acts between men in private were not prosecutable. In 1885 they became so. The Marquess's libel trial had the unfortunate result, with Wilde trying to disprove he was posing as a sodomite, of introducing the testimony of various young men with whom Wilde had allegedly had sexual relations.

When it became clear to Wilde's solicitors that he could not win the prosecution of the Marquess, they abandoned it and the Marquess was found not guilty. At this point Wilde's friends, including his wife, urged him to flee England for the Continent. But Wilde dithered, and an arrest warrant was issued for him based on the acts of gross indecency brought up by the libel trial. He was soon in prison, and on trial with a co-defendant, Alfred Taylor, who was also accused of procuring young men for Wilde.

The courtroom was scandalized by the details of Wilde's and Taylor's social and sex lives. Taylor owned some women's clothing, and lived in an apartment where the curtains were kept closed and he burned incense. The prosecution seemed intensely horrified by the class of several of the young men Wilde had been intimate with: they were working class. What could someone of Wilde's class, upbringing and education want with someone from a lower class? It was simply ghastly to contemplate. Wilde would wine and dine these young men in fancy hotels, then often sleep with them in the same bed in his hotel room. In his summation at the second trial (there were two trials on the indecency charges), the judge allowed that sometimes poverty brought two men together in the same bed, and there was nothing inherently immoral about merely sleeping thusly. But poverty did not pertain to Wilde's situation, therefore it had to be immoral. These young men shockingly called Wilde by his Christian name, Oscar. Wilde would give them money and gifts of silver cigarette cases. The class differences offended the prosecution, and in the end the judge, seemingly as much as the sexual acts. Wilde denied the basest charges against him - sodomy - but the young men had testified to not just kissing but lap-sitting and mutual masturbation, and a chambermaid had found greasy, vaseline-like stains on Wilde's hotel bedsheets, and he was done for.

The court sentenced him to two years imprisonment with hard labor. The judge announced, "Oscar Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon oneself to prevent oneself from describing, in language which I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise to the breast of every man of honour who has heard the details of these two terrible trials...People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame..."

Two years doesn't sound all that long, but Wilde had delicate, upper class sensibilities and suffered terribly. He lost much weight on the prison diet of gruel with suet and cocoa. His hard labor consisted of oakum picking. Every three months he was allowed to receive a letter from the outside world and a visit from a friend. The prison library contained not much more than Pilgrim's Progress; Wilde petitioned to get more interesting reading and received some. He sustained an ear injury which may have contributed to the meningitis which would kill him in 1900. An especially bitter pill was that the Marquess of Queensberry sued him for his assets to recover the costs of the libel trial, pushing him into bankruptcy. The betrayal was keenly felt given that Wilde had spent more than £5,000 on Bosie Douglas between 1892 - 1895. Wilde died in debt. He never saw his wife, Constance, or their two children again after his prison term; she preceded him in death by two years, at age 40. Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover (who had spent the trial on the Continent, at Wilde's request), converted to Roman Catholicism and forswore his homosexual ways.

Nine years after his death, his loyal friend and literary executor Robert Ross had Wilde's remains reburied at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, with an epitaph from The Ballad of Reading Gaol carved in the stone:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.

[Alison C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book on Oscar Wilde's trials I've read. It was comprehensive without being overly detailed; reflective of Victorian realities without being unnecessarily judgmental. But there is a reason why this book - which was first published in 1948 - has not been (and in my view should not be) reprinted since 1999. The way the author used the words "normal" and "abnormal" to describe, respectively, Wilde's once heterosexual and later homosexual tendencies is no longer acceptable in modern society.

I finished the book with a heavy heart; but was able to take comfort in the final passage which summed up Wilde's influences to society so aptly -

"His unhappy fate has done the world a signal service in defeating the blind obscurantists; he has made people think. Far more people of intelligence think differently today because of him. And when he wrote his Ballad of Reading Gaol, he not only gave the world a beautiful poem, but a much needed lesson in good will, pity, pardon and understanding for the down-and-out."

[Andrew Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potted version of Oscar Wilde’s life with detail of the three trials - one as prosecutor, two as defendant. Good on cross-examination and speeches. They seem to have managed to do trials a lot more quickly then. Interesting on the law of indecency and the restrictions on defendants giving evidence in their own cases. And, ultimately, an indictment of a legal system that put him away for 2 years hard labour for consensual sexual acts…

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

My intrigue with Wilde continues, now united with my interest in the law - why did Wilde pursue the initial charge? Why didn’t he leave the country? How much of his work reflects his true feelings? Can art be used as evidence of moral conviction?