Sir, – Alison Healy’s Irishwoman’s Diary (April 17th) reveals that, after Oscar Wilde’s death, the belongings left behind in his hotel room included a set of dentures.
I wonder whether Wilde’s dentist ever said to him, “to lose one tooth may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a full set looks like carelessness”? – Yours, etc,
KEVIN O’SULLIVAN,
Letterkenny,
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Co Donegal.
Sir, – Displaying teeth in a shop front to drum up trade, as a Limerick business does, has a distinguished precedent.
Dr Barry O’Meara, a Dublin surgeon who studied in Trinity and the RCSI, not only extracted Napoleon’s wisdom tooth but displayed it in the window of his London practice when he set up as a dentist, having been cashiered from the Royal Navy, losing his pension and being struck off the medical register for befriending the French emperor.
O’Meara’s finances were further boosted when the 37-year-old married an heiress, 66-year-old Dame Theodosia Beauchamp Leigh, who had inherited her fortune from her brother Sir Theodosius Beauchamp when he was poisoned by her first husband Capt John Donellan.
Following Donellan’s execution for this crime, she married Sir Egerton Leigh and, at his death, she married Dr O’Meara.
His fund of true stories (you couldn’t make them up) made him a renowned after-dinner speaker. – Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY,
Gaoth Dobhair,
Co Dhún na nGall.
