Edmond Perrier's Victorian Museum

The Ballad of Reading Gaol was a big poem written by Oscar Wilde in 1898, maybe a revelation, a plea against death penalty and the Victorian penal system. This story is included in De Profundis.

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a Royal Horse Guards trooper executed for the murder of his wife .In this poem, Wilde compares the situation of the prisoner to the situations faced by other men. After, Wilde describes the reaction of the prisoner facing his death. The others prisonners are surprised that he isn't afflicted by the news. Wilde also writes that Charles enjoyed his last hours in the prison. At the end of this poem, Oscar Wilde tells the horror of prison with the disrespect between the prisonners, the discomfort.