Oscar Wilde Is Convicted of Gross Indecency in London
On this day · 25 May 1895
At the height of his fame, the playwright was sent down for two years' hard labour under a law that criminalised love between men.
On 25 May 1895, at London’s Central Criminal Court, the celebrated playwright Oscar Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. The verdict came in his second criminal trial; an earlier jury had failed to agree. Months before, Wilde had been the toast of the West End, with The Importance of Being Earnest still drawing crowds.
The charge rested on Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the so-called Labouchère Amendment, which made any sexual act between men a crime. Two years was the maximum penalty, and the judge called it wholly inadequate for what he deemed “the worst case” he had tried.
Hard labour meant the treadmill, picking oakum, and near-total isolation.
Wilde served his term across Pentonville, Wandsworth and Reading Gaol, emerging broken in health and bankrupt. The ordeal produced his long prison letter De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He died in Paris in 1900. In 2017 the UK posthumously pardoned him and thousands of others convicted under the same statute.
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