London Star - Monday, May 27, 1895

WILDE.
LAST TERRIBLE SCENE
OF THE GREAT TRIAL.
SCATHING SPEECH BT THE
JUDGE IN PASSING SENTENCE.
Received With Cries of "Shame" From
the Public Gallery as Oscar Wilde,
Utterly Unnerved and Cast Down, was
Led to the Cells.

The end of the trial of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, poet and dramatist, was a tragic surprise. The case had been so whittled down that there seemed scarce sufficient left to enable 12 men to come to the unanimous determination that he was guilty. Half the counts of the original indictment had been struck out or withdrawn. What seemed most strongly in his favor--the case of Shelley, the only untainted witness among the accomplices of the alleged infamy, had been withdrawn from the jury for lack of corroboration.

It is remarkable how many of the most sensational Old Bailey trials have terminated on a Saturday afternoon or evening. It was half-past three, and the City was in the middle of its half holiday, when the jury which was to seal Wilde's fate retired to consider their verdict by the light of their own intelligence, and a summing up which had seemed to

MINIMISE THE EVIDENCE

of crime while condemning the pose, the dalliance with filth, which permitted Wilde to address to a youth like Lord Alfred Douglas the "madness of kissing" and "red and yellow wine" letters. There is no question that when the jury retired the common opinion in court was that there would be a second disagreement, and that this time Wilde would be permitted to go free. Every minute the jury remained absent strengthened this opinion, for indecision portended disagreement. And the minutes lengthened out into hours, till the nervous tension of the waiting crowd became painful, and the suspense of the prisoner must have been agonising. Wilde had been removed to the cells, so that his suffering were not made a spectacle for the morbid-minded crowd whom Mr. Justice Wills had so sternly rebuked earlier in the day. The judge, too, had retired, and there was an uncontrolled babel of argument and conjecture. It was a motley crowd. Just outside the court was that undignified peer, the Marquess of Queensberry, pacing the corridor in grotesque impatience. Down in the well of the court was his lordship's son and heir, Lord Douglas, with his lordship's sign manual on his discolored eyes,

GNAWING HIS FINGERS

with an anxiety which was reflected in the clean-shaven face of his co-surety, the Rev. Stewart Headlam. Sitting among the Junior Bar was a strange young man so curiously resembling the Archbishop of Canterbury that he was pointed out as "young Benson, who wrote 'Dodo,' don't you know." But it was not Dodo, but a friend of Daudet, Mr. R. H Sherard, the brilliant Parisian journalist. In the front of the gallery, packed in a mob of voluptuaries and sensation-mongers, was a tall, black-bearded person, who had been in court from the very beginning and had not lost a word of the evidence. And on the corner of the Bench sat the smug little chaplain who says "Amen!" when a condemned murderer is sentenced to be hanged by the neck. Even in the worst alternative his services could not be required, but he was there.

When, at the end of an hour, the jury sent out for a bottle of water, the trivial incident provoked laughter, which was rather hysterical than merry. At five o'clock, when they had been absent an hour and a half, they sent for pens and paper. The events of the last trial were repeating themselves down to the smallest detail, and when a letter from the jury was carried to the judge no doubt remained in anybody's mind that they had disagreed, and that Wilde was safe. Shortly before half-past five they were brought into court, and his lordship having returned to the bench, asked him to read his notes of the evidence of the waiter as to Charles Parker's visits to Wilde's rooms at 10, St. James's-place. His lordship read the passage, which involved no serious or damnatory statements, and himself added a few words which seemed to imply that this evidence was

NOT ESSENTIALLY SERIOUS.

Now the jury which tried Taylor had gone out of its way to say that misconduct between Wilde and Parker at the Savoy had not been proved to their satisfaction. If this jury had doubts about the St. James's-place evidence, the Parker indictments seemed bound to follow those in which Shelley and Atkins were concerned. For a few seconds the jury consulted in whispers, and it was thought they might agree upon a verdict--or to disagree--without retiring. Some difficulty arose, however, and at the request of the foreman they were again taken to the jury-room, but in less than five minutes they were back, and hundreds of eyes were trying to read a verdict in the twelve flushed but inscrutable faces. Wilde was brought up from the cells and placed in front of the dock. The last shadow of pretence of insouciance was gone from his haggard face. He was not pale--his face might more accurately be described as swollen and discolored--and he looked at the jury with dead eyes. "Gentlemen," said the Clerk of Arraigns, "have you agreed upon your verdict?"

"We have," replied the foreman.

So it was not a disagreement!

"Do you find that the prisoner at the bar committed the offence with which he is charged with Charles Parker at the Savoy Hotel?"

This was the first count in the indictment. Guilty on one, and the prisoner might as well be guilty on all--he was a lost man.

"GUILTY!"

said the foreman, and the deathly stillness of the court was broken by a choking gasp, the quick breath drawn by a hundred people.

"Do you find?"--and the clerk went on through the list of six indictments, and after each question, like strokes of a hammer on the lid of a coffin, came the fatal word "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "Guilty!" "Guilty!"

Then people looked at the face of the prisoner, and it was like the face of a corpse.

Sir Edward Clarke, whose defence of Wilde will be remembered as long as criminal records last, was already on his feet, shifty and resourceful to the last, with an application that sentence might be postponed. Why? That the demurrer which he lodged at the last trial on account of the joining of indictments for conspiracy with indictments under the Criminal Law Amendment Act might be considered and determined by the proper authority. "But the conspiracy counts were were withdrawn," protested the Solicitor-General. No matter, said the ex-Solicitor, and his demurrer had been entered on the record and would have to be argued. It seemed, too, that he was right, but the learned judge declared that to pass sentence now would not interfere with any right Sir Edward Clarke might have going on with his demurrer, and he saw no reason for postponing sentence.

Then it was seen that

TAYLOR HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP

from the cells, and was standing once more, nervously licking his lips, by the side of his wretched companion. Wilde had pulled himself together, and was leaning on the front of the dock, one hand nursing the other, in something of the old easy attitude. But his face was not a pleasant thing to see, the Apostle of the Beautiful was a painful and pitiful object as he stood eye to eye with the judge.

Here came another dramatic surprise. The studied fairness of the summing-up had not prepared anybody for the burning, scathing words in which his lordship passed sentence. Seldom have such terms been heard at the Old Bailey, never perhaps addressed to a man of Wilde's antecedents. "It has never been my lot," he said, "to have tried a case of this kind before which has been so bad. One has to put stern constraint upon oneself to prevent oneself from describing in language I ought not to use the sentiments which must arise in the breast of every man who has any spark of decent feeling in him, and who has heard the details of these two terrible trials. That the jury have arrived at a correct verdict I cannot persuade myself to entertain a shadow of doubt, and I hope that at all events those who sometimes imagine that a judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care that no prejudice shall enter into a case may see that that is consistent at least with a stern sense of indignation at the horrible crimes which have been brought home to both of you. It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things must be deaf to every sense of decency which can influence conduct. That you, Taylor, kept an immoral house is impossible to doubt; and that you, Wilde, have been in the centre of extensive corruption of young men of the most hideous kind it is equally impossible to doubt. I cannot, under such circumstances, do anything except pass the

SEVEREST SENTENCE

which the law allows, and in my judgment it is totally inadequate in such a case as this. The sentence on each of you is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years."

As his lordship finished Wilde rose to his full height. He held by the front of the dock--seeming to need its support--and his lips, which were of the same livid color as his face, moved. Those nearest to the dock say he cried "May I not speak, my lord?" but the only words generally audible were two deeply articulated words, astonishing in such a connection, the words "Shame! shame!" which came from the back of the public gallery, and were instantly drowned in the ushers' strident cries of "Silence! silence!" Taylor was already leaving the dock, with the light cat-like tread habitual to him. But Wilde seemed to have lost control of his limbs. When at last he turned away, between two warders, he trailed his feet like a man smitten with paralysis, and descended with obvious difficulty the steps leading to the cells. Already the voices of the newsboys could be heard crying "Wilde Verdict" in the sunny street, and the facile cheers of the ever-virtuous British crowd had been audible throughout the judge's address. The Old Bailey was filled with a Saturday afternoon crowd, which applauded and made jokes upon the result indifferently.