Life
1815-1876 [William Robert Wills Wilde; occas. W. R. Wilde]; b. Kilkeevin,
nr. Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, son of Dr. Thomas Wilde, with a practice
in Castlereagh, Co. Roscommon; named Wills after wealthy landowning friend;
surgeon and antiquarian, styled ‘father of Otology’; f. of Oscar;
b. Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, ed. Elphin Diocesan School, Banagher (the
school formerly principalled by Arthur Bell Nicholls, husband of Charlotte
Brontë), and Dr. Steevens’ Hosp., where he qualified BM, 1837;
worked with Charles Lever to relieve patients of cholera epidemic in Connacht,
reputedly performing an emergency trachotomy on a child with pocket-scissors;
travelled as physician to rich Glasgow merchant to Mediera, Teneriffe,
N. Africa and Middle East (‘Holy Land’), both in search of health,
on board Crusader; his account of his experiences, with details
of meteorology, archaeology, and ethnology of the region, earned enough
to provide his expenses for studies at Moorsfields Eye Hospital, London,
with visits to Vienna, Berlin, and Heidelberg where he learned of scientific
advances in ENT treatment, 1838-41; issued authoritative short work on
state of medicine in Austria; appt. medical adviser to Irish Census and
settled in Dublin, 1841; formally greeted Prince of Wales (Edward VII),
on royal visit of 1841; collected categories of information not included
in other national censuses; member of Irish Ordnance, 1841; est. Molesworth
St. Hospital in 1844, later established at his own expense St Mark’s
Ophtalmic Hospital, in disused Park St. Medical School at Lincoln Place
(nr. Gt. Brunswick St.), later incorporated with Victoria Eye and Ear
Hospital (Pembroke Rd.); his reputation built on mastoiditis operation;
The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life (1849), much of the
first portion having orig. appeared in Dublin Quarterly Journal of
Medicine in 1847; appt. Medical Commissioner to Irish Census, 1851,
a post retained in two successive Censuses; m. Jane Francesca Elgee [supra],
12 Nov. 1851; Irish popular Superstitions (1852), ded. to his wife;
lived on Westland Row (now Pearse St.), before moving to 1, Merrion Square,
at Clare St. corner, and there the Wilde’s literary salon was conducted;
ocular surgeon to Viceroy, 1853; ed. Dublin Journal of Modern Science,
from 1854; played part in hosting British Assoc. for the Advancement of
Science meeting, Dublin 1857; visited therewith by Baron von Kraemer,
Go. Of Uppsala, who conducted an expedition to the Aran Islands at the
same time; built house in Co. Mayo, which he called “Moytura”;
also owned a fishing lodge at Illaunroe, on Lake Fee, containing murals
of the Wilde boys as fishing putti by Frank Miles; Wilde had access to
the folios of Béranger’s sketches of Ireland; received Swedish
Order of the North Star at recommendation of von Kraemer, 1862; knighted
by Victoria, 1864 [var. by Carlisle, 1861], for work on the Irish Census
in which he provided exemplary data covering years including the famine
period; involved in a suit instigated by his wife against Mary Josephine
Travers, with whom he had an affair when she was an ear patient, 1854-60,
and who wrote a scurrilous pamphlet characterising him as Dr. Quilp, with
charges of raping a patient under chloroform; Travers received a farthing
[var. ha’penny] damages, and costs of £2,000 against Wilde; retired
from practice; issued Catalogue of Antiquities in the Museum of the
Royal Irish Academy, including animal materials and bronze, stone,
and gold (1858, 1862); issued Lough Corrib, Its Shores and Islands
(1867); Cunningham Medal, RIA, 1873, the year in which he visited Glendalough;
addressed Anthropological Section of British Association, Belfast 1874;
prepared tables on Famine mortality; wrote topographical and medical works;
coined term ‘tymboglyphies’ for engravings at Newgrange; d.
19 April, Dublin; bur. Moutn Jerome; reputedly the ‘dirtiest man
in Dublin’, causing Shaw to remark that Sir William was ‘beyond
soap and water as his Nietszchean son was beyond good and evil’;
illegitimately fathered a son, Henry Wilson (b. 1838), who later himself
became an ophtalmologist trained by Wilde, and two girls (Emily, b.1847,
and Mary, b. 1849), who were reared by his br. Rev. Ralph Wilde and who
died tragically young; his own funeral attended by one of the mothers
with the acquiescence of his wife; heavily mortgaged estate paid off by
his son Henry, to the benefit of Lady Wilde and Willie Wilde; a plaster
bust of Wilde by an unknown hand is displayed in Royal Victoria Eye &
Ear Hospital, Dublin. DIB DIW DIH DIL OCIL
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Works
Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe .., arising from a
voyage with a patient, 2 vols. (1840); The Ethnology of the ancient
Irish (Dublin: Kirwood and son 1844), 16pp.; The Beauties of the
Boyne, and its tributary the Blackwater (Dublin: McGlashen 1849),
ills. By G The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life; with remarks
on Stella, and on some of his writings hitherto unnoticed [2nd edn.
rev. and enl. (Dubl: Hodges & Smith 1849), 184pp., front (port.);
ills.; F. Wakeman engraved by George Hanlon; and Do. [enlarged
2nd edn. 1850), 324pp; ill., maps; Epidemics of Ireland (1851);
Irish popular Superstitions (1852); A Descriptive Catalogue
of the Antiquities of Stone, Earthen, and Vegetable Minerals in the Museum
of the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1857), 246pp.; A
Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the
RIA by W. R. Wilde (Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co. 1862) 100pp. [90
wood engravings]; E. C. R. Armstrong, ed., Catalogue of the Silver
and Ecclesiastical Antiquities in the Collection of the Royal Irish Academy
by [...] Sir William Wilde (1915); An Inquiry into the Time
of the Introduction and the General Use of the Potato in Ireland, and
Its Various Failures since that Period (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1856),
19pp.; Lough Corrib and Lough Mask (1867); The Closing
Years of the Life of Dean Swift (1849); Cat. of Contents of the
Museum of the RIA., (3 vols., 1858); [presum. intro. to Conwell,]
Discovery of the Tomb of Ollamh Fodhla (1873).
Reprints, Colm O’Lochlainn, intro., Logh Coirib, Its Shores and Islands with notices of Loch Measga [3rd edn.] (Three Candles Press 1938), and Do. [4th edn.] (Dublin: Three Candles 1955), 199pp. [first edn. 1867]; The Beauties of the Boyne, and its tributary the Blackwater [rep. of 1850 edn] (Cork: Tower Books 1978), 324pp.; Irish Popular Superstitions [facs. of 1st edn., 1852 ] (Shannon: IUP 1972), 140pp.
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland [Lady Wilde], with sketches of the Irish past, to which is appended a chapter on the ancient race of Ireland by the late Sir William Wilde [being Sir William’s ‘Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association’] (London: Ward & Downey 1888).
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Criticism
G. Wilson, Victorian Doctor: Being the Life of Sir William Wilde
[1942] (Yorkshire: EP Publishing 1974).
Terence de Vere White, The Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1967).
Eric Lambert, Mad with Much Heart: A Life of the Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Frederick Muller 1967).
Maria Luddy, ‘“'Normal” Development in an “Abnormal” Place: Sir William Wilde and the Irish School of Medicine’, in Greta Jones & Elizabeth Malcolm, eds., Medicine, Disease, and The State in Ireland, 1650-1940 (Cork UP 1999) [q.pp.].
Sir Samuel Ferguson, 'Elegy on Sir William Wilde', in Poems, ed., A. P. Graves [n.d.; 1914], p.103.
Eileen Battersby, ‘The surgical intellectul of the senior Wilde’, in The Irish Times (19th May, 2001).
Michelle McGoff-McCann, Melancholy Madness: A Coroner's Casebook, foreword by Patrick McCabe [2004].
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Notes
Belfast Public Library holds W. R. Wilde, A descriptive catalogue
of the antiquities of stone, earthen, and vegetable minerals in the Museum
of the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1857), 246pp.; also The
Ethnology of the ancient Irish (Dublin: Kirwood and son 1844), 16pp.;
An inquiry into the time of the introduction and the general use of the
potato in Ireland, and its various failures since that period (Dublin:
M. H. Gill 1856), 19pp.; Loch Corrib, its Shores and Islands, with notices
of Loch Measga. 4th ed., arranged and ed. by Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin:
Three Candles 1955), 199pp. [first ed. 1867]; The Beauties of the Boyne,
and its tributary the Blackwater. 2nd ed. enlarged (Dublin: McGlashen
1850), 324pp; ill., maps. [1st ed. 1849]; also 2nd ed. rep. (Cork: Tower
Books 1978), 324pp. [orig. 1850].; The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s
Life; with remarks on Stella, and on some of his writings hitherto unnoticed.
2nd ed. revised and enlarged (Dubl: Hodges & Smith 1849), 184pp.,
front (port.); ills. [much of the first portion of this essay. orig. appeared
in Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medicine 1847]; A descriptive cat. of the
antiquities of gold in the museum of the RIA by W. R. Wilde; with ninety
wood engravings (Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co. 1862) 100pp. [ills.]; Irish
popular superstitions (Shannon: IUP 1972), 140pp; facs. rep. of 1st ed.,
1852.
Belfast Linenhall Library holds Catalogue of Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, 1) animal materials and bronze, 2) gold, 3) stone.
Hyland Books (Catalogue 224) lists Wm. R. Wilde, Logh Coirib, Its Shores and Islands [3rd edn.], with an intro. by Colm O’Lochlainn (Three Candles Press 1938).
Tally stick: Wilde asked an Irish father ‘if he did not love the Irish language - indeed the man scarcely spoke any other’, and was told, ‘“I do”, said he, his eyes kindling with enthusiasm; “sure it is the talk of the ould country, and the ould times, the language of my father and all that’s gone before me - the speech of the mountains and lakes, and these glens, where I was bred and born; but you know”, he continued, “the children must have larning”, and as they tache no Irish in the National School, we must have recourse to this to instigate them to talk English.“’ (Quoted in Kevin Whelan, ‘Pre- and Post-Famine Landscape Changes’, in Cáthal Portéir, ed., The Great Irish Famine [Thomas Davis Lectures Series], RTÉ/Mercier, 1995, pp.31-32.)
Wilde’s tables on Famine mortality were challenged by Joe Mokyr (author of Why Ireland Starved), in a paper at International Conference on Hunger, New York 1995; reported by Luke Dodd, director of Strokestown Famine Museum, in Irish Reporter (Third Quarter, 1995), p.14.
William Wilde formally greeted Prince of Wales (Edward VII), on royal visit of 1841 with an emblem in the form of a ‘Faith, Loyalty and Patriotism were happily combined in a large blue and red flag, having in the centre a green crown, containing a prince of Wales feather, and surmounted by an ancient Irish cross in gold. Below the banner hung an ancient Irish harp surmounted by an ancient spear.formally greeted Prince of Wales (Edward VII), on royal visit of 1841.’ (James Murphy, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria, Cork UP 2002; quoted by Lucille Redmond in review, Book Ireland, Dec. 2002, p.320.)
‘As everybody knows, the [pither] can go to the well too often; and it was one of the “gallantries” of Sir William Wilde that, in Dec. 1864, was nearly to prove the undoing of himself and his wife’ ... [Mary Josephine] Travers v. Wilde and Another.’ Account given in Horace Wyndham, Speranza (1951) [see under Lady Wilde, supra.]
Sir William Wilde quoted as saying, ‘The Yeatses were the cleverest and most spirited people I ever met’ (Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.20).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)