Gross Indecency explores the true story of Oscar Wilde’s court trials for the crime of the same name - the consequences of which would eventually come to define the rest of his life.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright, and a proudly gay man born on the 16th of October, 1854. Wilde is best known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Both of these works are well-known for their glorification of the idea of beauty for beauty’s sake, hedonism, and satirizing the high-society standards of Victorian England. Both, too, contain no small amount of homoerotic subtext, which many scholars argue come from Wilde’s own identity as a gay man. Among artists, particularly those of the LGBTQ+ community, Wilde is a much-beloved figure for his unapologetic nature and his legacy as a writer dedicated to the celebration of love, joy, romance and human connection - with no shortage of melancholy at the same time. The trials Wilde would become entangled in started as a simple libel prosecution, before spiraling into a public scandal out of his control, due to his being a celebrity at the time. Wilde would find both himself and his work picked apart in court in the name of convicting him of “gross indecency” - in other words, the act of being a homosexual man.
Sir Alfred Douglas
Poet and journalist, known best for being Oscar Wilde’s most infamous lover, Douglas was the favorite child of his mother who called him “Bosie,” a nickname that stuck. Douglas had tumultuous and abrasive relationships with everyone from his father to Oscar Wilde himself. He would reunite with Wilde again years after the events of Gross Indecency, but once again, the two failed to stay together. Douglas would later serve as the chief mourner at Wilde’s funeral. Further into his life, he converted to Catholicism, denounced Oscar Wilde, and founded a far-right and deeply antisemitic magazine known as Plain English. Douglas died in 1945 of congestive heart failure.
John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry
Father of Sir Alfred Douglas, John Douglas was a Scottish nobleman whose name would later be attached to the “Queensberry Rules,” which define the rules of modern boxing. He was a boxing, horse racing, and fox hunting enthusiast. Known to many as an outspoken atheist, his political career hit a speed bump when he refused to take a religious oath to enter the House of Lords, describing it as “Christian tomfoolery.” He also had a legendary short temper, sometimes threatening to beat those who angered him with a horse whip, including Alfred Douglas (who once wrote “I despise you” to his father in a private letter). The Marquess was widely disliked by those both in and outside the English aristocracy. He died a mere ten months before Wilde himself.
Sir Arthur Charles
Sir Arthur Charles was the judge who presided over Oscar Wilde’s first gross indecency trial. He led a fairly standard legal career for the time, educated at University College School and University College London, having studied Mathematics. (Law practice was less of a specific degree at this time in England.) Beginning as a law reporter, his bar career centered on ecclesiastical cases until he became a Queen’s Counsel in 1877 (in other words, a senior judge). His work as trial judge for Wilde’s case received mixed reception. Some spectators, such as H. Montgomery Hyde, who would go on to perform gay rights activist work, described it as professionally impartial. Others called Charles’s Tory affiliations into question.
Sir Alfred Wills
Wills was the judge over Wilde’s final sodomy trial. He received his education in math, classics, and law at King Edward's School, Birmingham and at University College London, before he was appointed to the Queen’s Counsel in 1872. Wills was far more openly contemptuous and bigoted towards Wilde during their real life trial than his predecessor Charles. This judge deigned to give Wilde the maximum sentence, and added that he felt it was "totally inadequate for a case such as this", and "the worst case I have ever tried.” Wilde attempted to speak up, but was silenced by the chanting of, “Shame!”
.jpg)
Sir Edward Clarke
Barrister and politician, Clarke was educated at King’s College London. He was called to the bar in 1864 whereupon he became permitted to represent others, including Oscar Wilde. In 1891, he was a representing lawyer during the Tranby Croft affair - a gambling fraud court case that became a popular scandal due to the involvement of the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII of the United Kingdom) whom Clarke cross-examined personally. He represented the guilty party; his closing statement was well-regarded, but ultimately considered futile. He was dedicated to his clients - he held himself deeply responsible for the outcome of Wilde’s case, and for decades held that the court’s decision in the Tranby Croft affair was wrong, and that his client, the accused, was in fact innocent.
Works Cited
-"Douglas, Lord Alfred Bruce (1870–1945)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32869. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
-Toczek, Nick (2015). Haters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and the UK Far Right. London, England: Routledge. p. 239. ISBN 978-1138853485.
-Dowling, Linda (1994). Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-2960-6.
-"Death Of Sir Arthur Charles". The Times. 21 November 1921. p. 14.
-Foldy, Michael S. (1997). The Trials of Oscar Wilde Deviance, Morality and Late-Victorian Society. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07112-4.