William Wilde

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Early life and career

William Wilde was born at Kilkeevin, near Castlerea, in County Roscommon, the youngest of the three sons and two daughters of a prominent local medical practitioner, Thomas Wills Wilde, and his wife, Amelia (d. c.1844) [James McGeachie, ‘Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills (1815–1876)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 ] , and received his initial education at the Elphin Diocesan School in Elphin, County Roscommon. In 1832, Wilde was bound as an apprentice to Abraham Colles, the pre-eminent Irish surgeon of the day, at Dr Steevens' Hospital in Dublin. He was also taught by the surgeons James Cusack and Sir Philip Crampton and the physician Sir Henry Marsh. Wilde also studied at the private and highly respected school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery in Park Street (later Lincoln Place), Dublin. [James McGeachie, ‘Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills (1815–1876)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 ] In 1837 he earned his medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was awarded a knighthood in 1864 for his medical contributions and his involvement with the Irish census - he had been appointed medical commissioner to the Irish census in 1841.

Recognition

He ran his own hospital - St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital for Diseases of the Eye and Ear - in Dublin and was appointed to serve as Oculist-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. At one point, Wilde performed surgery on the father of another famous Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw. Wilde had a very successful medical practice and was assisted in it by his natural son, Henry Wilson, who had been trained in Dublin, Vienna, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Paris. Wilson’s presence enabled Wilde to travel and he visited Scandinavia, where he received an honorary degree from Uppsala, and was welcomed in Stockholm by Anders Retzius, among others. King Karl XV of Sweden conferred on him the Nordstjärneorden (Order of the North Star).

Wilde married the poet Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee in 1851, who wrote and published under the name of Speranza. The couple had two sons: Willie and Oscar Wilde, and a daughter, Isola Francesca, who died in childhood. In addition to Henry Wilson, William Wilde had two other illegitimate children by earlier liaisons, Emily and Mary Wilde, both of whom died in a tragic fire accident in 1871.

Later life

In 1864, Wilde was knighted, but his reputaion suffered when Mary Travers, a long-term patient of his and the daughter of a colleague, claimed that he had seduced her two years earlier [Jonathan Fryer, Wilde Haus Publishing, 2005 ISBN 190434111X] . She wrote a pamphlet crudely parodying Wilde and Lady Wilde as Dr and Mrs Quilp, and portraying Dr Quilp as the rapist of a female patient anaesthetized under chloroform. She handed these out outside the building where Wilde was about to give a public lecture. Lady Wilde complained to Mary's father, Robert Travers, which resulted in Mary bringing a libel case against her. Mary Travers won her case but was awarded a mere farthing in damages by the jury. Legal costs of £2000 were awarded against Lady Wilde. The case was the talk of all Dublin, and Wilde's refusal to enter the witness box during the trial was widely held against him as ungentlemanly behaviour.

From this time onwards Wilde began to withdraw from Dublin to the west of Ireland, where he had started in 1864 to build what became Moytura, his house overlooking Lough Corrib in Connemara. [Terence de Vere White, The Parents of Oscar Wilde London: Hodder & Stoughton (1967)]

Publications

* "The Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean", 1840.
* "The beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater", 1849
* "Lough Corrib, its Shores and Islands", first published in 1867.
* "The closing years of the life of Dean Swift".
* "The Epidemics of Ireland".

Books about

* Victorian Doctor: the Life of Sir William Wilde. T. G. Wilson (Methuen, London, 1942.)

References

External links

* [http://www.galway.net/galwayguide/history/wrwilde/ Online text of "Lough Corrib"]
* [http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/68/5/664 Wilde in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics]
* [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29403?docPos=3 Wilde in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]