Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery by Gyles Brandreth Read Free Book Online

hurts.’ He put down the rule book and unbuttoned his jacket pocket to inspect his watch. ‘It’s coming up for ten o’clock. As happy fortune would have it, I can show you how much it hurts right now. Put on your cap, Wilde.’
    He called another warder in from the adjoining room. ‘We’re going to show our new prisoner his first flogging. If it makes his hair stand on end, so much the better. It’ll be all the easier for you to cut afterwards.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll get the best view from Landing B. A flogging’s not a pretty sight – except, of course, it might be to Mr Wilde. The lad’s only fourteen.’
    The two men marched me from the guard-room, across a yard, along a series of stone-walled corridors and, eventually, up two steep and narrow flights of metal stairs. As we marched through the prison I heard nothing but the clang and echo of our steps and the rhythmic rattle of Warder Braddle’s heavy breathing. I saw no other prisoners. I looked neither to left nor right, and in my hideous prison cap could barely see the way ahead.
    ‘Stop,’ ordered Warder Braddle, at last. ‘Look over the rail – down there.’ It was like looking down from the deck into the hold of a ship. Two floors beneath us, in a patch of sunlight at the end of a long corridor of cells, stood a heavy wooden chair. Bent over the chair, face forward, secured to it by his arms and legs with leather straps, was the boy who was to be beaten. His buttocks and back were stripped bare. He was so thin that even I, in my hooded cap, standing thirty feet above him, could see each individual rib.
    Standing in front of the youth, about a yard from his head, were two older men: the prison governor and the prison surgeon. Standing behind him were two warders: one held the instrument of torture.
    ‘It’s the cat-o’-nine-tails,’ said Warder Braddle, holding the back of my head so that I could not look away. ‘Have you seen one before? The prisoner is being flogged for insolence and insubordination, but because he’s a boy, aged between ten and sixteen, it’s the small cat he’s getting, not the large one. The handle is the same size, but each of the nine cords is just two feet in length. You’d not be let off so lightly, Wilde.’
    Down below, the governor checked his timepiece. ‘Proceed,’ he said. ‘Twelve strokes.’
    ‘Sir!’ replied the warder, raising the flail high above his head. ‘One!’ The man brought it down onto the boy’s back with a terrible force. ‘Two . . . three . . .’ He counted out the strikes and the governor nodded his acquiescence to each one. I closed my eyes as the blows fell on the tethered child. The boy’s screams were horrible – and piteous – like the cries of a pig being unskilfully slaughtered.
    ‘. . . Ten . . . eleven . . . twelve.’
    Warder Braddle at my side called down to the prison governor. ‘I think the last one went missing, sir, don’t you?’
    I opened my eyes and saw the governor look up at Braddle and smile. ‘One more, then,’ he ordered. The warder with the cat thrashed the boy’s bloodied back once more.
    While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one desire.
    On 26 August 1895 – after three months of incarceration – I was permitted my first visitor. Robert Sherard, the bravest and most chivalrous of all brilliant beings, came to see me. Twenty minutes was the time allotted for the visit. We stood five feet apart, in a vaulted room, divided by two rows of iron bars. In the narrow passageway between the rows, Thomas Braddle stood, keeping watch. As Robert talked – and smiled – and chided – and did his valiant best to lift me from my misery, the warder looked on contemptuously. When our time was up, and Robert went on his way, Braddle sneered, ‘Not really worth the bus fare, was it, Mr Wilde?’
    On 21 September 1895, my wife, having travelled from Switzerland for the purpose, was my next visitor. In the gloom of the vaulted visitors’