William Wilde - Later Life

Later Life

In 1864, Wilde was knighted, but his reputation 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. 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 £2,000 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. He died aged 61 in 1876, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.