The Winnipeg Daily Tribune - Thursday, December 19, 1895

WILDE’S CONDITION.
"Malingering" is Quite Common in Many of the Government Prisons.

New York, Dec 19 — A London dispatch says: The pitiable physical appearance presented by Oscar Wilde, when he was recently brought up from prison to be examined in the Bankruptcy court, has given such an impetus to the memorial for his pardon now being circulated for signatures that his enemies, of whom the Marquis of Queensberry is still the chief, have promulgated a report that his condition is due to "malingering" a term used by prison authorities to designate the practice of prisoners who feign loss of appetite in order to starve themselves into an emaciated condition, and thus secure removal to the prison hospital, where the quarters are comfortable and luxuries are sometimes obtainable; and also used in reference to prisoners who simulate nerve or brain diseases for the same purpose. A recent official report of the prison inspectors stated that "malingering" is quite common in many of the government prisons, and that the feigned symptoms are sometimes so baffling to the medical officers that rigorous punishment has to be resorted to in order to determine whether the prisoner is really afflicted or simple shamming. The effort to make it appear that Wilde is a "malingerer" however, has received considerable of a set-back by an investigation held this week into the death of one of his fellow-prisoners, who had been charged with the same offence, and for nearly two years had been subjected to unusually severe prison discipline. Upon a postmortem examination being made, it was developed that, instead of man having pretended sickness, he had in fact been suffering from the rupture of an aneurism at the base of the brain, and which it would have been impossible for any medical man, no matter how experienced, to diagnose. The friends of Wilde say that, in the face of this development, it would be not only cruel, but brutal, for the prison authorities to add to his present mental and physical. Torture by further punishing him on the hypothesis that he is solely responsible for the breaking down of his health.