The transcripts from Oscar Wilde's trials for 'gross indecency' at London's Old Bailey court in 1895 are now available online for the first time, released alongside a raft of other historical murder, robbery and abduction cases. Oscar Wilde faces the court in an 1895 cartoon The new Old Bailey Online website is billed as the largest single source of searchable historical information about British lives ever published. The transcripts cover every one of the 210,000 trials held at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913. Oscar Wilde's trials - considered the most famous in the history of the Old Bailey - took place in April and May 1895, where the celebrated writer's association with 'male prostitutes, crossdressers and homosexual brothels' was highlighted by the prosecution in order to have him imprisoned for 'gross indecency' at a time when homosexuality was an illegal taboo. Under cross examination, Wilde defended his same-sex liaisons with the now-oft quoted description: "The love that dares not speak its name. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it." After one trial ended with an indecisive jury, a further trial resulted in Wilde's imprisonment on the gross indecency charge - he was sentenced to two years of 'hard labour'. The conviction angered his many supporters, one of whom demanded, in a published letter, "Why does not the Crown prosecute every boy at a public or private school or half the men in the universities?"
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Wednesday, 30th April 2008 - 12:03pm