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 Yoel Moshe Salomon Ezer protested to the municipality of Petah Tikva regarding its handling of the 130th anniversary celebrations and the scant attention accorded to the role of Eleazer and Yehuda Raab. In his interview with Eshed, he worried that the "Ballad" risked being confused with history. Ben Ezer quoted an unnamed Petah Tikva official who had told him that “the history is what Yoram Taharlev wrote”. Ben Ezer added that “the education system in the schools, which is to say the authors of textbooks and certainly the teachers too take the ballad as the single authorised source for teaching about the history