Oscar Wilde in Bow Street, 1895.

Bow Street police station, WC2. Photo © David Secombe 2010.

Tying in with today’s post on Wilde’s trials on Baroque in Hackney, we reprise this photograph and extract which were originally published in 2010 on Esoteric London.

From The Life of Oscar Wilde by Hesketh Pearson, 1946:

[. . .] at some point between seven and eight o’clock that evening the police called at the Cadogan Hotel and knocked at the door of Room 53.

‘Mr. Wilde I believe?’

‘Yes?’

‘We are police officers and hold a warrant for your arrest.’

‘Oh really?’ He seemed relieved.

‘I must ask you to accompany us to the police station.’

Wilde got up, a little unsteadily, put on his overcoat, took his hat and gloves, and followed them out. They drove in a four wheeler, via Scotland Yard, to Bow Street. Robert Sherard asked Wilde, in view of his superstition on the subject, whether the cab horse that drove him from the Cadogan was white. ‘I was too much interested to notice’, said Wilde, having chatted away on all sorts of topics with the detectives, who thought him a most amiable gentleman. At Bow Street, the charges were read out to him, after which he was taken to a cell, where press reporters were allowed to peer at him through the grille, and where he paced to and fro all night, unable to sleep. Next day he was removed to Holloway Gaol.