The Ballad of Reading Gaol as C.3.3., although many reviewers, and of course those who bought the numbered and autographed third edition copies, knew that Wilde was the author, but the seventh edition, printed on 23 June 1899, actually revealed the author's identity, putting the name Oscar Wilde, in square brackets, below the C.3.3.. It brought him a small income in his remaining lifetime. The poem consists of 109 stanzas of 6 lines, of 8-6-8-6-8-6 syllables, and rhyming a-b-c-b-d-b. Some stanzas incorporate rhymes within some or all of the 8-syllable lines. The whole poem is grouped into 6 untitled sections of 16, 13, 37, 23,
Charles Thomas Wooldridge to be carried out. On the morning of the execution Wooldridge attended a service in the prison chapel, showed repentance for his terrible crime and was resigned to his fate. Because of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" Wooldridge became the most famous person ever to be executed at Reading. The executioner was James Billington, whose use of a drop longer than specified by the official Table of Drops stretched Wooldridge's neck by eleven inches. He was aged 30 when executed. Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol when Wooldridge was hanged there on Saturday 7 July 1896; the two never met