Oscar Wilde
Just what did the Marquess of Queensberry write to Oscar Wilde on the calling card he left at Oscar's club? Well, that's been a subject of dispute ever since the Marquess handed the card to the porter who couldn't make out the words either. The words, though, have long been read as "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a so[m]domite" which is the way the card ended up being read in court and so was the reading ultimately recorded in the "not guilty" verdict against the Marquess. The jury - upon instructions of the judge and on a motion by Oscar's laywer - decided that the words were indeed true and that Oscar did indeed pose as the card stated.
But Richard Ellman, who wrote the latest and volumous biography of Oscar, did a handwriting analysis of the Marquess's script. He decided the true reading was "posing so[m]domite". Why Queensberry testified to the "posing as a" wording is, we learn, because that would be an easier charge to defend. In other words, it would be easier to prove Oscar posed as it rather than did it.
With all due respect to the scholarship of endowed professors at Oxford - even well endowed professors at Oxford - CooperToons has to go with what the Marquess himself had actually testifed, at least for now. This was not "posing as a so[m]domite", but "posing as so[m]domite" without the indefinite article. Queensberry interjected this correction when the club porter testified he read the card as "ponce and sodomite".
The spontaneity of Queensberry's response suggests that his testimony really represented the actual words. And Queensberry seems to be born out by the letter-by-letter comparison shown above.