08 May 2025

By Clara Jetter

Oscar Wilde served a two-year prison sentence for ‘gross indecency’ – in other words for having a sexual relationship with a man, which was illegal in Victorian Britain. In fact, this would only change in 1967 even then only for men over 21 who are privately engaging in a homosexual relationship.

How exactly did Wilde end up in prison? Well, to find out we have to go back to 1891, where Oscar Wilde met and fell in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed Bosie, who was a poet 16 years his junior. Wilde and Douglas began an affair, which later would lead directly to Oscar Wilde’s prison sentence. Relationships seldom stay secret, which tragically meant Lord Alfred Douglas’ father, Marquis of Queensberry, found out about theirs. Needless to say, he was furious and accused Oscar Wilde of being a sodomite. Oscar Wilde, unable to let it go, decided to sue the Marquis for libel. It backfired spectacularly.

In April 1895 the case went to court and Wilde had to defend himself and his writing – especially the homoerotic themes in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde eventually dropped the lawsuit, but it was too late. Friends urged him to flee to France, where homosexuality was legal, but Wilde refused. Instead, he was arrested and had to stand trial for gross indecency. The jury failed to reach a verdict. This might seem like a moment of relief alas it is not! In May 1895 Oscar Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency and was sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison.

He spent his sentence in Reading, west of London, where conditions were poor and where he wrote a long letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. This letter was published in 1905 in a drastically shorter version called De Profundis. In May 1897 Oscar Wilde was released from prison. Now bankrupt, he immediately moved to France, where he published his work The Ballade of Reading Gaol and lived until his death in November 1900.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Wilde

https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/articles/life-of-oscar-wilde/

Law Change Homosexuality: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/overview/sexuality20thcentury/#:~:text=Sexual%20Offences%20Act%201967,for%20Northern%20Ireland%20until%201982.