Oscar wilde de profundis full text7/8/2023 ![]() ![]() When Wilde arrived, Reading Gaol was one great Victorian machine of Christian penance, forcing prisoners to meditate on their crimes in silence, while performing physical labor amid the reek of their own waste. The only sanitation was a bucket he had to empty - or "slop out" - himself: "You were unlocked, let down for breakfast, locked back up again to eat it, unlocked again to slop out, to empty the bucket, then locked up again," Davis recalls.Ī miserable existence for sure, but Davis says Wilde had it worse - in Wilde's day, prisoners weren't even allowed to talk. Like Wilde, Davis spent 23 hours a day in his cell. In 1895, Wilde was convicted of homosexual activity and sentenced to serve two years. ![]() A painting of Wilde hangs inside a cell at the former Reading Prison. ![]()
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