Charles Thomas Wooldridge Charles Thomas Wooldridge Charles Thomas Wooldridge (c.1866 – 7 July 1896) was a Trooper in the Royal Horse Guards who was executed in Reading Gaol for the murder of his wife and who, as 'C.T.W', was the dedicatee of Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol". The son of Eleanor (born c.1827) and Charles Wooldridge (born c.1824), Wooldridge was born in East Garston and joined the Royal Horse Guards in 1886. He married Laura Ellen "Nell" Glendell (1873–1896) in 1894 when his regiment was posted to Windsor. However, as his commanding officer had not given permission for the wedding to
The Ballad of Reading Gaol book demanded a change—for fear that the prison doctor would sue over the line which originally read "While the coarse-mouthed doctor gloats", it was changed to "While some coarse-mouthed doctor gloats". As one biographer, Leonard Cresswell Ingleby, said, "Never, perhaps, since Gray's "Elegy" had a poem been so revised, pruned, and polished over and over again as this cry from a prison cell". Originally the first edition—with no assurance of a second edition—was planned for only 400 copies, but when Wilde calculated the printing expenses, he realised that even selling all 400 would not cover costs, and at his instigation