The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison. During his imprisonment, on Tuesday, 7 July 1896, a hanging took place. Charles Thomas Wooldridge had been a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards. He was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, Laura Ellen, earlier that year at Clewer, near Windsor. He was
The Ballad of Reading Gaol his common-law wife (and promptly presenting himself and confessing to a policeman) on 29 March 1896; on 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896—the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. Wilde was released from prison on 18 May 1897 and he promptly went to France, never returning to Britain. He died in Paris, at the age of 46, on 30 November 1900. While in France, surviving on an allowance from his wife of three pounds a week—deliberately meagre to discourage the sort of high