Irish Daily Independent - Monday, April 8, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
ALLEGED ATTEMPTED SUICIDE OF OSCAR WILDE.
Our London correspondent telegraphs: —
There was a rumor late on Saturday night that Oscar Wilde had committed suicide in Holloway Jail. The rumor hardly needed the contradiction which afterwards came. Wilde who will pose to the end of the chapter expressed his desire on Saturday to commit suicide if he got the chance. Thereupon his scarf pin was taken from him, and the small looking glass was removed from his cell, for it was with the broken pieces of looking glass that a militia officer charged with similar offenses managed to commit suicide in a cell adjacent to Oscar’s toward the end of last year. If Wilde intended to commit suicide the time to have done it would have been when he threw up sponge at the Old Bailey. But he waited until he was almost hysterical to make up his mind, when it was utterly impossible that could he carry out his supposed intentions. An idea may be gathered of the position which Wilde occupied in the dramatic world when it is said that his income amounted to £10,000 a year.