Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Dublin by Stephen Wade

Author:Stephen Wade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: TRU002000, Basic Code 1: TRU002000
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781844687060
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2008-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Libel and Dr Wilde

1864

‘When you are as old as I am, young man, you will know that there is only one thing worth living for, and that is sin…’

LADY WILDE

Admirers of the work of Oscar Wilde will always think of his trial, arrest and imprisonment in Reading Gaol as a central aspect of his life; it typifies his tendency to make enemies, to stir things up around him, and to thrive on dissent and disagreement. The heart of his best work is a critique of many of the moral values of his time. But perhaps not so well known is the turbulent life of his father, Sir William Wilde, the famous Dublin doctor. The most sensational affair in his often scandalous life is one that involved a court case, and in many ways, the plaintiff was the person on trial.

William Wilde and his wife, Jane (who was a writer herself, known as ‘Esperanza’), were major figures in Dublin life and culture in the 1860s. He was a famous specialist in eye, nose and throat medicine and his knowledge and skills were widely admired. But he was also something of a womaniser, and in an atmosphere of what one biographer calls the ‘Regency permissiveness’ of the time, William Wilde acquired a reputation of a man who liked a good time and whose morals were not perhaps what they should have been.

Although Lady Wilde was clearly tolerant of her husband’s small misdemeanours, when it came to a libel case against her, things became very difficult. It all began when a young woman called Mary Travers, who had been a patient of Sir William, began to spread rumours about her being raped by him while under chloroform. The incident had allegedly happened two years before this gossip appeared – and that is a strange fact in itself – and it seems more than accidental that she began to make trouble at the time when Wilde had been knighted in 1864 and when Lady Wilde was becoming a literary celebrity in Ireland.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.