Oscar Wilde, the playwright and poet, was among more than 50,000 gay men posthumously pardoned on Tuesday under a new “Turing Law” introduced for homosexual crimes that no longer exist.

The law, contained in the Policing and Crime Bill, is named after Alan Turing, the computer pioneer and Bletchley Park codebreaker who was convicted of homosexual acts in 1952. He was pardoned in 2013.

As well as the posthumous pardons, the new law will allow 15,000 living men who were found guilty of sexual acts that are no longer illegal to apply to the Home Office for a pardon.