The World - Wednesday, June 5, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
RUMORS ABOUT OSCAR WILDE.
At the time of Oscar Wilde's trial it was common gossip that he would in some manner be saved from conviction and punishment, and that the highest influences were at work in his behalf. He was found guilty, and the extreme penalty of the law, two years' solitary confinement at hard labor, was imposed by the Court.
Now that he is declared to have become insane, the English people are expressing the belief that his alleged malady is a pretense and is designed as an excuse for his pardon and release.
This is nonsense. The law is not as loosely administered in England as it is here, and there is not the slightest probability of Wilde's pardon. If he should really lose his reason he would become a prisoner in a lunatic asylum for the term of his sentence instead of in Pentonville Prison, but there would be no "discharged cure" at the end of a few weeks, as there might be here.
Oscar Wilde will serve out his term, and a prison is preferable to a madhouse as a place of confinement. The rumor of his intended "disclosures" is probably all nonsense.
Was Oscar Wilde ever sane?