Background
The daughter of Horace Lloyd, an Irish barrister, and Adelaide Atkinson Lloyd, she married Wilde on 29 May 1884, and had both her sons within the next two years.
The daughter of Horace Lloyd, an Irish barrister, and Adelaide Atkinson Lloyd, she married Wilde on 29 May 1884, and had both her sons within the next two years.
lieutenant is unknown at what point Constance became aware of her husband"s homosexual relationships. In 1891 she met his lover Lord Alfred Douglas when Wilde brought him to their home for a visit. Around this time Wilde was living more in hotels, such as the Avondale Hotel, than at their home in Tite Street.
Nevertheless, by all accounts, she and Wilde remained on good terms.
She must have known about his sexuality by 1895 when Wilde was tried and imprisoned for "gross indecency", or homosexual acts. The couple never divorced and though Constance visited Oscar in prison so she could tell him the news of his mother"s death, she also forced him to give up his parental rights and later, after he had been released from prison, refused to send him any money unless he no longer associated with Douglas.
Constance died on 7 April 1898 five days after a surgery conducted by Luigi Maria Bossi. The letters reveal symptoms nowadays associated with multiple sclerosis but apparently wrongly diagnosed by her two doctors".
Constance sought help from two doctors.
One of them was a "nerve doctor" from Heidelberg, Germany who resorted to dubious remedies. The second doctor—Luigi Maria Bossi—conducted two operations (for uterine fibroid) in 1895 and 1898, the latter of which ultimately led to her death. According to The Lancet, "the surgery Bossi performed in December 1895 was probably an anterior vaginal wall repair to correct urinary difficulties from a presumed bladder prolapse.
In retrospect, the actual problem was probably neurogenic and not structural in origin." During the second surgery in April 1898 Bossi probably "did not attempt a hysterectomy but merely excised the tumour in a myomectomy".
However, shortly after the surgery Constance developed uncontrollable vomiting, which led to dehydration and death. The immediate cause of death was likely severe paralytic ileus, which developed either as a result of the surgery itself or of intra-abdominal sepsis.
"Ultimately, both Bossi and the hapless Constance met their ends tragically: he by the bullet of an assassin and she by the knife of an irresponsible surgeon."
Constance is buried in Genoa, Italy.