The St. James's Gazette - Thursday, April 4, 1895

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The English public is at the present moment involved in one of those orgies of indecency occasionally permitted it by the operation of open law courts and an enterprising press. Publicity in judicial proceedings is, as a rule, good, and so is newspaper activity; but the two things combined sometimes produce results which are painful and disgusting. To guard against this, in most civilized countries, certain trials and actions at law are conducted with closed doors, and in point of fact even in this country, some divisions of the High Court are by statute permitted to hear cases in camera. We have long urged that the power, or an analogous power, should be extended to the judges in all the superior courts, and particularly to the judges and commissioners of assize, and to those sitting at the Central Criminal Court. We say an analogous power, for we do not greatly care whether the public is or is not actually excluded from the hearing of the cause. That is a matter of no great importance. Reporters, witnesses, solicitors, counsel in the case, and counsel not in the case, take up most of the available space in court in a sensational trial; if a few members of the general public choose to occupy what little room is left they may do so for what we care. But what is wanted is that the pollution of an unusually disgusting or corrupting case shall not be spread broadcast over the land by means of the newspapers. What we ask for is that the judge shall have power to order that the evidence in any particular case, or in any part of it, shall not be reported; and that if the order is violated the offending newspaper-men shall be punished for contempt, or be liable to such other pains and penalties as may be deemed desirable. That is the effectual method of hearing a case in camera nowadays. It would give a considerable discretion to the judge no doubt; but the discretion is not at all likely to be abused. On the whole, we imagine, the public could and would trust the judges; and if it were thought necessary to keep a certain control over their proceedings, so as to guard against the possible burking of an occasional aristocratic scandal, it might be provided that in all cases the judge's summing-up could be published. The publication of the decorous and measured judicial statement would do no great harm. It is the reproduction, in the fullest detail, day by day and hour by hour, of the questions and answers in the witness-box, that is the public offence.

At present the onus of guarding the public morals, or not too scandalously shocking them, is thrown upon the Press. "The news-papers oughtn't to report these things," says the shocked Briton as he rises from the attentive study of his eleven columns or so of outrageous evidence. But this is really cant, and remarkably unfair cant. A newspaper, after all, is a business concern, carried on for profit; and there is something peculiarly offensive in the assumption that the duty, which the State, the Legislature, and the Judicature alike neglect, should be calmly thrown upon the private trader, who is invited to protect the public virtue or the public sense of decorum out of his own pocket. In point of fact, tits newspapers do not report particularly offensive causes—unless they know that they are particularly interesting. Take this Oscar Wilde and Queensberry case. We are not, we trust, in any way prejudicing the issue when we say what is perfectly notorious. We do not, of course, attempt to form a judgment as to whether Lord Qeensberry did or did not libel Mr. Wilde, or whether, if he did so, the libel is justifiable. But in fact, as distinguished from form, the case is a trial of an individual for committing, or attempting to commit, or pretending to commit, offences so abominable that they cannot be mentioned. From time to time degraded wretches, charged with such or similar crimes, are tried and convicted in the criminal courts; but the papers do not reproduce the evidence, and give only the result with bald brevity. There is no great temptation to do otherwise. In the present case we quite recognize the force of the temptation, though we think that newspapers of standing and reputation might well rise superior to it. On the one side the Law, with all its pomp and circumstance, carefully arranges an atrocious, but no doubt to many a horribly interesting, exhibition; on the other side is the Public, pressing its money on the newspaper-proprietor, who in this case practically acts the part of showman, and grants admission to the show at the fee of a penny or a halfpenny. It is rather too much to put all the responsibility for the entertainment on the shoulders of the fallible person who takes the gate-money. If the judges were able to exclude the spectators, respectable newspapers would not have the distressing alternatives before them with which they are confronted too often.

Meanwhile the responsibility is with us and without pharisaism we venture to think that it is one to be understood, in act as well as in words, by journals which respect themselves, their readers, and their obligations. That the public should want to know the result of the remarkable quarrel between Mr. Oscar Wilde and Lord Queensberry, now being fought out to its poisonous end at the Old Bailey, is natural. We gave our readers, as seemed right and in the public interest, the outline of the case in the opening speech of counsel yesterday, and in a brief summary of the plaintiff’s evidence. That it is for the public good, or that it is desired by men of taste and decent living, to say nothing of women, to have the details brought out in the further evidence in this case, we decline to believe. We shall let our readers know the result of the trial, and keep them informed of any circumstances of legitimate general interest arising in connection with it; but the evidence we do not propose to publish. We are no fanatical purists, no believers in that "cloistered virtue," as MILTON calls it, which shrinks from contact with the ugly facts of Nature and Life. But some things there are which are best not spoken, unless imperative necessity and overwhelming duty compel, in publications issued for general and promiscuous reading. We do not believe that those who read and like their St. James’s Gazette, and who have given us many flattering proofs of their regard and esteem, will permit us to be sufferers by a reserve, which we hope may be imitated by some of our contemporaries. They will know, and we are sure will not dislike the knowledge, that there is at least one London newspaper to-day which can he read without a shudder by persons of ordinary decent feeling, which need not be excluded from a household where there are women and young girls, which can be permitted to lie on the drawing-room table without offence, and which can be taken into the family circle without apprehension.