Leonard Smithers that is holy "all" obscene drawings." Smithers ignored Beardsley’s wishes, and continued to sell reproductions as well as forgeries of Beardsley's work. After the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895, Smithers was one of the few publishers prepared to handle "decadent" literature, such as Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" in 1898, and "The Savoy". He went bankrupt in 1900, and died in 1907 from drink and drugs. His naked body was found in a house in Parson's Green on his 46th birthday, surrounded by empty bottles of Dr J. Collis Browne's Chlorodyne. He was buried in an unmarked grave,
The Ballad of Reading Gaol Pentonville prison, where "hard labour" consisted of many hours of pointless effort in walking a treadmill or picking oakum (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes), and allowed to read only the Bible and "The Pilgrim's Progress". Prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other, and, out of their solitary cells, were required to wear a cap with a sort of thick veil so they would not be recognised by other prisoners. A few months later he was moved to Wandsworth Prison, which had a similar regimen. While he was there, he was required to declare bankruptcy,