Belfast News-Letter - Friday, April 12, 1895

OUR LONDON LETTER.
BY OUR PRIVATE WIRE.
BELFAST NEWS-LETTER OFFICE, 169 FLEET STREET, E.C., THURSDAY NIGHT.

[...]Confinement in Holloway Jail has already told considerably upon Oscar Wilde, who looked very pale and anxious as he appeared to-day in the dock at Bow Street. Sir Edward Clarke, Q.C., and Mr. T. Humphreys represented him, the late Solicitor-General chivalrously sticking to his client without fee or reward to the end. Very few lawyers in Sir Edward Clarke's position, for obvious reasons, would have done the same. I am glad to say the newspapers that revelled in the ugly details of the libel action are at last becoming ashamed of themselves. A discussion is now being started in certain quarters as to whether some restriction should not be placed upon the publication of demoralising details of cases heard in the Law Courts. Sir Francis H. Jeune, the president of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division, is of opinion that the Press generally exercises a wise discretion, but there are certain painful exceptions among the evening journals. The public, after all, are the best correctives, but in a large place like London unfortunately there is a demand for unedifying law reports on the part of a too numerous section, and one competing journal does not like to feel that it has been surpassed in circulation on certain special occasions by a pushing rival. That is the whole explanation, whatever it may be worth.