Reading, Berkshire the Obscure, as the temporary home of Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol from 1895 to 1897. While there, he wrote his letter "De Profundis". After his release, he lived in exile in France and wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", based on his experience of the execution of Charles Wooldridge, carried out in Reading Gaol whilst he was imprisoned there. Ricky Gervais, who is from Reading, made the film "Cemetery Junction", which, although filmed elsewhere in the UK, is set in 1970s Reading and is named after a busy junction in East Reading.
Magnus Hirschfeld number, C33, as a way of symbolically linking his fate to theirs, to read out aloud Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol". Hirschfeld found the reading of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" to be ""markerschütternd"" (shaken to the core of one's being, i.e. something that is emotionally devastating), going on to write that the poem reading was "the most earth-shattering outcry that has ever been voiced by a downtrodden soul about its own torture and that of humanity". By the end of the reading of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", Hirshfeld felt "quiet joy" as he was convinced that,