T H E O S C H O L A R SEXHIBITIONS

December 2014Oscar Wilde and Reading Gaol

The Department of English Literature in collaboration with the Berkshire Record Office, presents a special exhibition to mark the final closure of Reading Gaol. We are most grateful to Professor Peter Stoneley for his help in compiling this page.

On show are documents from the prison archives, focussing particularly on the period of Oscar Wilde’ imprisonment. Of especial interest are the photographs of certain prisoners who shared Wilde’s captivity, like this one of Henry Bushell, ‘a labourer and thief so prolific, or inept, that he was incarcerated 21 times between 1892 and 1911’:

Figure 1: Henry Bushell

This exhibition throws a new light on life in the prison in Wilde’s day. One notable exhibit is the death certificate of Trooper Wooldridge, condemned to death for the murder of his wife and inspiration of Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’.

The Execution of Trooper Charles Thomas Wooldridge

On 30 March 1896, the subject of Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol was admitted to the prison.

The day before, Wooldridge had travelled from his Army barracks in London to see his wife, Ellen, in Clewer. They had been married for 15 difficult months, and had been forced to live apart for most of those. Ellen had recently written to Wooldridge and asked him not to visit her again. The letter incensed him. As he crossed the threshold of their terraced home, he cut her throat. Wooldridge gave himself up immediately to the police. He explained that he and Ellen had quarrelled, that he suspected her of having an affair, and that his anger had driven him to murder.

There was some expectation locally that, despite his guilt, Wooldridge might be spared the gallows. But mercy was not forthcoming, and he was condemned to death at the Assizes on 18 June 1896.

Some 19 days later he was hanged at the Gaol in the hut that served as the photographic studio. This register entry records the mechanics of his death, as well as providing feedback on the conduct of his executioner.

Figure 2: Report of Wooldridge’s execution

The exhibition also presents for the first time specially commissioned photos taken of the prison when it was closed by the Government in December 2013.

Also in the exhibition are various documents directly concerning Wilde, notably the report commissioned in July 1896 on Wilde’s physical and mental health.  The report concluded that his situation was not worse than that of his fellow prisoners even though it recognised that ‘Prison life must of course be more irksome and severe for a prisoner of his education and antecedent than it

would be to an ordinary one’.

Figure 3: The ReportThe showcases are : 1. Building the Gaol; 2. The Prison Population;3.4. Children and Punishment;5. ‘Yet Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves’;6. Wilde’s Prison Writings;7. Wildean Publishing.For the exhibition this mock-up of the Her Majesty’s Prison and Young Offenders Institution identity badge was created:

All images courtesy of the Berkshire Record Office, 9 Coley Avenue, Reading. The exhibition was opened by Merlin Holland, who gave a talk on ‘Oscar Wilde: in Court, in Prison,

and in Exile’. For the complementary article by Peter Stoneley ‘“Looking at the Others”: Oscar Wilde and the

Reading Gaol Archive’, Journal of Victorian Culture volume 19, issue 4, 2014, please click here.

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