1. Sir William Robert Wills Wilde FRCSI was an Irish oto-ophthalmologic surgeon and the author of significant works on medicine, archaeology and folklore, particularly concerning his native Ireland.
21 Facts About William Wilde
1. 2.
William Wilde's family were members of the Church of Ireland.
3.
William Wilde was descended from a Dutchman, Colonel de Wilde, who went to Ireland with King William of Orange's invasion army in 1690, and numerous Anglo-Irish ancestors.
4.
William Wilde received his initial education at the Elphin Diocesan School in Elphin, County Roscommon.
5.
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.
6.
William Wilde was taught by the surgeons James Cusack and Sir Philip Crampton and the physician Sir Henry Marsh.
7.
William Wilde studied at the private and highly respected school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery in Park Street, Dublin.
8.
Once back in Ireland, William Wilde published an article in the Dublin University Magazine suggesting that one of the "Cleopatra's Needles" be transported to England.
9.
William Wilde was a founder member of the Irish nationalist Home Government Association, established by his Trinity College Dublin colleague Isaac Butt as the precursor to the Irish Parliamentary Party.
10.
William Wilde 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.
11.
At one point, William Wilde performed surgery on the father of another famous Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw.
12.
William 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.
13.
William Wilde was awarded a knighthood in a ceremony at Dublin Castle on 28 January 1864 more for his involvement with the Irish census than for his medical contributions, although he had been appointed medical commissioner to the Irish census in 1841.
14.
On 12 November 1851, William Wilde married the poet Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee, who wrote and published under the name of Speranza.
15.
Sir William Wilde acknowledged paternity of his illegitimate children and provided for their education, but they were reared by his relatives rather than with his wife and legitimate children.
16.
From 1855 to his death in 1876, William Wilde lived at No 1 Merrion Square, now the headquarters of American College Dublin.
17.
William Wilde 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 anaesthetised under chloroform.
18.
William Wilde distributed the pamphlets outside the building where Wilde was about to give a public lecture.
19.
Lady William Wilde complained to Mary's father, Robert Travers, which resulted in Mary bringing a libel case against her.
20.
From this time onwards, William 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, County Galway.
21.
William Wilde died aged 61 in 1876, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.