Charles Thomas Wooldridge

Wooldridge's wife was "off the strength" and so was unable to join her husband when his regiment moved from Windsor to Regent's Park Barracks in London, forcing the couple to live apart and putting a strain on the marriage.

[4] Having heard rumours that she was having an affair with either another soldier or an official at the General Post Office where she worked, and having received a document from her to sign stating that he would stay away from her,[5] he arranged to meet Laura Ellen outside Regent's Park Barracks on 29 March 1896 but, when she failed to turn up, he travelled to her lodgings at Clewer, near Windsor.

However, the trial judge, Mr. Justice Hawkins, stated that Wooldridge's taking the cut-throat razor with him to Windsor was evidence of premeditation and so refused to consider a reprieve.

He resisted attempts at a reprieve (including a recommendation for clemency from the jury that convicted him) by petitioning the Home Secretary Sir Matthew White Ridley for the sentence to be allowed to be carried out.

[10] The execution of Wooldridge (known as "C.T.W" in the poem) had a profound effect on Wilde, inspiring the line in the ballad "yet each man kills the thing he loves".