In fact the Treasury witnesses against Wilde were all blackmailers and people of the lowest character, with two exceptions.
The exceptions were a boy named Mavor and a youth named Shelley.

With regard to Mavor the judge admitted that no evidence had been offered that he could place before the jury; but in his summing up he was greatly affected by the evidence of Shelley.

Shelley was a young man who seemed to be afflicted with a species of religious mania.

Mr.
Justice Charles gave great weight to his testimony.

He invited the jury to say that "although there was, in his correspondence which had been read, evidence of excitability, to talk of him as a young man who did not know what he was saying was to exaggerate the effect of his letters." He went on to ask with much solemnity: "Why should this young man have invented a tale, which must have been unpleasant to him to present from the witness box ?" In the later trial before Mr.Justice Wills the Judge had to rule out the evidence of Shelley _in toto_, because it was wholly without corroboration.