The San Francisco Call - Sunday, June 23, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
WILDE'S HEATH IS GOOD.
The Esthete Furnishing Splendid Motive
Power for a Treadmill.
LONDON, ENG., June 22. — The weekly report of the Governor of Pentonville Prison, where Oscar Wilde, the erstwhile esthete, poet and dramatist, is now languishing in durance vile, confirms the previous circulated denial of the assertion that the noted prisoner had lost his mind.
London, Eng, June 26 — The weekly report of the Governor of Pentonville Prison, where Oscar Wilde, the erst-while aesthete, poet and dramatist, is now languishing in durance vile, confirms the previous circulated denial of the assertion that the notes prisoner had lost his mind.
The report says that Wilde's health has been so robust that for the past three week[sic] he has been furnishing motive power for a treadmill, in accordance with the usual custom, and.that he will shortly be put at the hard task of bag-making for the remainder of his term. His conduct is reported as exemplary, which, if continued, will entitle him to release four months prior to the expiration of his two-year sentence. He will not be allowed to see any of his friends until the latter part of August, and then only a limited number and for a very short time.
Notwithstanding the heinousness of Wilde's crime, there is a marked tendency on the part of the public to regard him with more or less pity, inasmuch as it is generally admitted that he has been made a scapegoat, and that the crime for which he has been incarcerated is so far from rare that a wholesale application of the drastic methods applied in his case would involve many who now affect the most profound contempt for the dethroned litterateur.
Notwithstanding the heinousness of Wilde's crimes, there is a marked tendency on the part of the public to regard him with more or less pity, inasmuch as it is generally admitted that he has been made a scapegoat, and that the crime for which he has been incarcerated is so far from rare that a wholesome application of the drastic methods applied in his case would involve many who now affect the most profound contempt for the dethroned litterateur.