Sholto Johnstone Douglas of the writer Oscar Wilde. When Wilde sued Bosie's father for libel when accused of "posing as a somdomite" ("sic"), this led to Wilde's downfall and imprisonment. In 1895, when during his trial Wilde was released on bail, Sholto Johnstone Douglas stood surety for £500 of the bail money. In his "Noel Coward: A Biography" (1996), Philip Hoare writes of "...late nineteenth-century enthusiasts of boy-love; writers, artists and Catholic converts inclined to intellectual paedophilia, among them Wilde, Frederick Rolfe, Sholto Douglas and Lord Alfred Douglas." As a portrait painter, Douglas belonged to the period of John Singer Sargent and "...led
Lord Alfred Douglas in Worthing, much to the consternation of the latter's wife Constance. On another occasion, while staying with Wilde in Brighton, Douglas fell ill with influenza and was nursed by Wilde, but failed to return the favour when Wilde himself fell ill in consequence. Instead Douglas moved to the Grand Hotel and, on Wilde's 40th birthday, sent him a letter saying that he had charged him the bill. Douglas also gave his old clothes to male prostitutes, but failed to remove from the pockets incriminating letters exchanged between him and Wilde, which were then used for blackmail. Alfred's father, the Marquess