Oscar Wilde’s jail cell key up for auction in London

The original key to Oscar Wilde’s prison cell, valued at about €6,000, is to go under the hammer at auction in London tomorrow.

Sotheby’s auction of English literature-themed items includes “a key believed to have opened Cell 3.3 at Reading Gaol”.

The Dublin-born writer was sentenced to two years’ hard labour in 1895 for the crime of “gross indecency” at a time when homosexual acts were not just illegal but taboo in Victorian society.

Following his release, he went into exile in France and wrote his most famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which was published under the pseudonym "C.3.3" , a reference to cell block C, landing 3, cell 3.

The key, mounted in a wooden presentation box, is being sold with a framed statement "from Leslie Portch, Governor of HM Prison Reading", who said, "the key had been used for all cells in 'C' wing "and consequently would have been used to unlock C. 3-3 occupied by Oscar Wilde from November 19th, 1895 to May 18th, 1897".

After Wilde’s departure, the prison underwent numerous changes until its final closure in 2013, but despite extensive redevelopment and rebuilding, Wilde’s old cell block still stands.

Exhibition

Earlier this year, Reading Gaol, located in Berkshire to the west of London, was the site of an exhibition in which artists, writers and performers responded to Wilde’s incarceration and the Victorian penal regime.

Among the participants was the novelist Colm Tóibín who was temporarily locked into Wilde’s cell while he read aloud the letter that Wilde had written to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, which was later published as De Profundis.

Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, who attended the event, wrote afterwards of the “shock of realising that Wilde’s cell is not a museum – it was a working prison cell up until 2013 when Reading Prison was used to incarcerate young offenders”.

He wrote: “The space is the same as in Wilde’s time but it now has a dingy sink and toilet and a battered metal desk.”

The original key to the cell, which Sotheby’s described as “an evocative item”, will be auctioned in London on Tuesday and has a pre-sale estimate of between £4,000 (about €4,800) and £6,000.