Oscar Wilde's homosexual lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, was not tried alongside the writer for gross indecency because he was viewed as the "victim" in the affair, according to official papers made public for the first time yesterday.
Legal advice given to the UK Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, Sir Hamilton Cuffe, warned there was no proof of "immoral relations" between the two men and concluded that a prosecution would not be in the public interest.
The advice is contained in a previously "lost" letter from senior treasury counsel Charles Gill, which has been released to the Public Record Office and throws fresh light on the 1895 case that scandalised Victorian England.
Wilde was a 38-year-old married man at the height of his powers as a dramatist when he embarked on the affair with Douglas - a 22-year-old Oxford undergraduate nicknamed Bosie - that was to lead to his downfall.