Sydney Evening News - Thursday, May 23, 1895

There are few things so serious as to have no amusing side. Even in connection with the miserable case of Oscar Wilde, with all its horrible and debasing suggestions an episode has occurred which, though painful and shocking enough in itself, in one respect at least makes a strange approach to the positively grotesque. That is the offer of the Marquis of Queensberry, while engaged in a fierce straggle with his son in a London street, to fight his graceless offspring in any part of England for £10,000. Matches between pugilists standing in similar relationship to that of the extraordinary combatants in question have certainly not been provided for in those famous "rules" associated, with the name of the Marquis himself. What those Continental critics who are so apt to form queer conclusions as to the ways of Englishmen will think of this incident it would not perhaps be difficult to guess. It will probably evolve legends to which that traditional French one of the nobleman leading his wife by a halter to Smithfield and selling her there will fee a mere trifle.