The appointment of William Wilde as assistant commissioner for the 1851 Census, which covered the time of the Great Famine, and would challenge the various guesstimates of the number of its victims, was initially seen as foolhardy.
Wilde’s career up that time had been in medicine where, after a brilliant apprenticeship at Dr Steevens’ Hospital, he qualified as a surgeon at 22 years of age. He travelled extensively to study eye and ear surgery in Vienna, Berlin and London, and was credited with several innovative techniques in ophthalmological surgery. He castigated hospital carelessness for its lack of hygiene which was a major cause of puerperal sepsis in newly delivered mothers. He was alarmed when following the death of a patient, from cholera, he had been nursing in Galway, the bed linen was never changed. He advocated that a simple hand wash with chlorinated lime water would greatly reduced the incidence of hospital infections. This was some 20 years before Joseph Lister’s seminal publication on antiseptics in surgery.
In 1841 he established his first clinic at St Mark’s Hospital, Dublin, dedicated to the treatment of diseases of both eye and ear, largely for poor patients. The hospital became the premier eye infirmary, and the only hospital in these two islands specialising in diseases of the ear. Patients came from all over Ireland and students from Europe and North America.
Yet Wilde’s medical qualifications, statistical knowledge, familiarity with the Irish language and folklore along with publications on social issues all made him a surprising, but as it turned out, an inspired choice for this important census.
Terrible years
Wilde, 36 years old at the time, approached the Herculean task of conducting the 1851 census with his usual thoroughness and energy. He presented a detailed, completed report just five years later. He had sought additional information than what was usually requested such as incidence of impaired hearing and sight, as well as mental disabilities which were unique at the time.
This latter information he would use to draw the attention of the authorities to help those requiring assistance. Also, at his insistence, the inhabitants of both the workhouses and hospitals, which had been ignored in previous censuses, would be included.
The main interest, however, was in the mortality of those terrible years. There was a wide variation in the numbers recorded. The Times of London, for example, estimated that there were about 20,000 deaths from the famine, while the Irish Freeman’s Journal put the figure at 4.75 million. Wilde reported a decline in the general population of 2.5 million with deaths accounting for one million, and emigration accounting for much of the remainder. These estimates were accepted later by both The Times, and the Freeman’s Journal.*
Enormous task
In the 1850s and early 1860s William Wilde was at the zenith of his fame. He was an internationally recognised doctor, and had written successful books on surgery, antiquities and folklore. He married Jane Francesca Elgee, a niece of the writer Charles Maturin. She wrote for the Young Ireland Movement of the 1840s in The Nation under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’. They had three children, William, Oscar and Isola who died of fever in her ninth year.
In March 1857 he undertook the enormous task of cataloguing, describing and illustrating some of the 10,000 antiquities in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. He successfully completed the task in four months, which had committee of experts had failed to accomplished in four years. For this the Academy presented him with its highest award, the Cunningham Gold Medal. Other awards followed, including the Order of the Polar Star, presented by the King of Sweden, for his medical innovations, and a knighthood for his work on the census.
Tragic accident
Despite this success Wilde displayed a somewhat reckless side to his character. He had several illegitimate children, and it was common knowledge he was a philanderer.
Before his marriage, Wilde had three children, two girls Emily and Mary (who were given their father’s name ), and a boy, Henry Wilson, whom he later took as a partner in his St Mark’s Hospital. Wilde privately acknowledged paternity, and paid for the children’s education. With the exception of his wife Jane, it is likely that only very few people knew of Wilde’s dalliances with the ladies before his marriage, and probably afterwards. The girls lived with their uncle, Rev Ralph Wilde, of Drumsnatt, in Co Monaghan, away from the Dublin scene. And there the matter would have privately rested were it not for the terrible happenings on the snowy night of November 10 1871.
The two young women, Emily (aged 24 ) and Mary (aged 22 ) were invited to a ball at Drumaconnor House. After most of the other guests had gone, their host, Mr Reid invited Mary for a last waltz. As they swirled around the room, Mary’s highly inflammable crinoline dress touched the open fire and burst into flames. The remaining guests screamed in terror. Emily rushed to her sister and attempted to put out the fire. But her dress too, burst into flames. Reid tried to smother the spreading fire, even rushing them outside and covering them in snow.
But little could be done. In agony Mary died on November 19, and Emily on November 21 from severe burns.
Strangely silent
Such an appalling tragedy would have been headlines in all the Dublin newspapers for weeks. But they are strangely silent on the matter. Instead the local paper, The Clogher Record, mentioned the tragedy but referred to the two women as Miss M Wylie, and Miss L Wylie. In the coroner’s report the surnames were correct but Emily’s name was changed to Emma.
It does appear that Wilde and his wife used all their influence to block the truth from coming out. Hearing the news from Drumaconnor, Wilde contacted the local constable urging him to see that Emily was not told her sister had died ‘so as not to aggravate her fragile state’; and later, convinced the constable not to hold an inquest, but merely to make an inquiry - which would be simpler. He may also have asked for the names to be changed.**
Wilde however, was completely broken by the event. It is said that his moans and cries could be heard by those passing his house at Merrion Square.
‘A golden sunbeam’
It is also likely that his children, Willie, Oscar and Isola Emily, knew nothing of their half-brother and sisters. The family secret was kept secret. But Oscar did not escape remorse when his beloved sister Isola Emily, who had died of fever in her ninth year, of whom he described as ‘dancing as a golden sunbeam about the house’.
Oscar, 12 years-old at the time, was devastated. Throughout his life he visited her grave frequently. He kept a lock of her hair in a decorated envelope. It was found among his few possessions when he died a pauper in Paris November 30 1900.
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All my life is buried here. (Requiescat, By Oscar Wilde ).
Next week: Accusations of rape, and a sensational Dublin trial, that had the gossips buzzing.
NOTES: * Modern scholarship puts the numbers who died during the Great Famine in the years 1846 - 1851 somewhere between 1.08 million and 1.48 million with death more likely to come from disease such as dysentery, typhus, and cholera.
Sources this week include The Enigma of Sir William Robert Wills Wilde (1815 - 1876 ), by Patrick Boland and Sean P Hughes, Journal of Medical Biography.
