Death of Oscar Wilde in Paris

Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.

He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.

Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College), the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee, and Sir William Wilde. Oscar was two years younger than his brother, William (Willie) Wilde.

Death

Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Wilde died in relative obscurity and financial ruin in a small hotel, the Hôtel d’Alsace, in Paris.

Wilde’s later years were marked by personal and professional challenges. He faced legal troubles and imprisonment for “gross indecency” due to his homosexual relationships, which were criminal offenses in Victorian England at the time. After serving a prison sentence, Wilde lived the remainder of his life in exile in France under the name Sebastian Melmoth.

Different opinions are given as to the cause of the disease: Richard Ellmann judged it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde’s meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde’s physicians, Paul Cleiss and A’Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (from the prison injury, see above) treated for several years and made no allusion to syphilis.

Burial

Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city.