Senator David Norris visits the National Archives to view records relating to his landmark case, David Norris V Ireland, on display as part of Pride Week

Today, Senator David Norris visited the National Archives to view records relating to his landmark case in 1988 at the European Court of Human Rights, David Norris V Ireland. The records are on public display for the first time as part of Pride Week.

The Department of Foreign Affairs files relate to the successful case he brought against Ireland’s criminalisation of certain homosexual acts between consenting adult men. His case proved that the criminalisation of these acts was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This successful case led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.

In 1977 Senator Norris had unsuccessfully taken the Attorney General to the High Court over the criminalisation of homosexual acts and appealed his case to the Supreme Court of Ireland. In 1983 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the existing law. David Norris appealed the Irish Court’s decision to the European Court of Human Rights in 1983 and this Court passed judgement in his favour in 1988. The laws impugned by the judgement were repealed five years later in 1993.

Speaking at today’s event, Orlaith McBride, Director of the National Archives said that

”David Norris’s tenacious courage over thirty years ago led to one of the most transformative changes in Irish law and Irish life. So many other future developments in Irish society such as Marriage Equality would not have been possible had it not been for his brave journey which started in the 1970’s.

We are a more diverse and inclusive society today thanks to Senator Norris, and Pride Week is a celebration not just for our LGBTQ+ community but for the whole of society”.

Also speaking at the event, Senator Norris said, “I am delighted that the National Archives has decided to display papers relating to my case in the European Court of Human Rights during Pride month. It was an historic moment and I was served by a very good legal team led by Mary Robinson”.

Also on public display for the first time is a penal file relating to James Pillar, who was one of those imprisoned as a result of a major scandal in Ireland, the Dublin Castle Scandal of 1884.

The background to these records is that William O’Brien, the editor of the Home Rule journal United Ireland implied in an article that James Ellis French, the Director of Detectives with the Royal Irish Constabulary, had been engaging in sexual activity with other men.

Subsequent investigations uncovered a network which included the head of the General Post Office, Gustavus Cornwall. French and Cornwall unsuccessfully sued O’Brien for libel and were arrested along with six other men, including James Pillar.

Pillar was to suffer most as a result of the scandal. He was aged 63, a married Quaker grocer and wine merchant with three children. His business premises at 56 Lower Rathmines Road was a key meeting place for those implicated. He pleaded guilty to a charge of buggery and was sentenced to twenty years penal servitude which he served in Mountjoy and Portlaoise prisons.

James Pillar’s penal file gives an insight into life in prison in the 1890’s with photographs taken at the beginning and end of his incarceration showing how dramatically he had aged in less than ten years. By April 1894, after serving almost ten years, he was described as “a feeble old man showing symptoms of cerebral disease” and was released on special licence on the 15th of May 1894. He died in Mercer’s Hospital on the 24th of November 1894.

Speaking of the records on display, Orlaith McBride, Director of the National Archives said “the records of the Dublin Castle Scandal of 1884 and the contemporary records relating to the David Norris V Ireland Case, demonstrate the value of the National Archives in protecting and making available the records of the state from our historical collections to more recent government records”.

These records will remain on public display throughout Pride Month at the National Archives, Bishop Street, Dublin 8 in line with COVID restrictions.