Sydney Evening News - Thursday, June 27, 1895

THE COURTS.
Oscar Wilde's Prison Life.
HOW HE WILL BE TREATED.

The London correspondent to the "New Zealand Herald" of June 22 writes as follows at the conclusion of the trial of Oscar Wilde: After Wilde was sentenced on Saturday, May 25, the aesthetic felon was taken to Holloway Gaol, in the northern part of London. There all money and valuables were taken away from him by the Warden. He was stripped to the shirt, and an officer wrote down in the prison register a minute account of his appearance, the color of his eyes, hair, and complexion, and any peculiarities, such as a broken finger, tattoo marks, moles, &. Then he was put in a hot bath, and his shirt, the last vestige of his days of freedom, removed. Emerging from the water, he found a full suit of prison clothes ready for him, from underlinen to loose shoes, and a hideous Scotch cap. His clothes are of a dirty drab canvas, plentifully adorned with broad arrows. Shortly afterward Wilde ate his first real prison meal—an allowance of thin porridge and a small brown loaf. He was then taken to Pentonville, a prison for convicted criminals, hard by the Holborn Viaduct. He was examined physically with great care, since upon the medical officer's report will depend what labor he is to be set to. If he is passed as sound and fit for first-class hard labor, he will take his first month's exercise on the tread wheel—six hours daily, making an ascent of 6000ft, twenty minutes on continuously, then five minutes' rest. The necessity for a close medical examination is obvious before a man is subjected to this labor. Wilde will receive close scrutiny, and be thoroughly overhauled before a decision is made. During the first month on the wheel, if put there, Wilde will sleep on a plank bed, a bare board raised a few inches above the floor, and supplied with sheets. Clean sheets are given to each prisoner, two rugs and a coverlet, but no mattress. His diet will be: Breakfast at half-past 7 a.m., cocoa and bread; dinner at noon, bacon and beans one day, soup another, cold Australian meat another, and brown flour suet pudding another, the fist three being repeated twice a week, potatoes with every dinner. After he has finished his spell on the wheel he will be put to some industrial employment—not play-writing, although it might be the most profitable to the prison department, but probably post-bag making, tailoring, or merely picking oakum. He will exercise in the open air daily for an hour, walking with the rest of his ward in Indian file, no talking permitted. He will be allowed no communication with the outside, except by special permission, until he has completed three months of his sentence. Then he may write and receive one letter and be visited for twenty minutes by three friends, but in a visiting cell, separated from them by wire blinds and in the presence of a warden. The letter and visit may be repeated at intervals of three months, but all these concessions depend first upon his industry, and next upon his conduct. There is no escape from the plank bed until a certain number of marks are awarded for work done, and in the same way letters and visits are accorded. Wilde will attend chapel every morning and twice on Sundays. He will be visited, if he wishes it, by the chaplain as often as he likes, also daily by the Governor or Deputy-Governor. A Government inspector will visit him once a month and hear any representations or complaint, and the visiting committee of London magistrates will call frequently at the prison for the same laudable purpose. On his release, Wilde, if he has worked well, and behaved well, will have earned the magnificent sum of 10s, which will be paid to him by an agent of the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society.