Ireland had its own Epstein scandal in 1884. No island was involved, but rather a grocery shop run by James Pillar at 56 Rathmines Road, Dublin, where, in the evening, its owner offered to a different set of customers the pick of the market in young men.

Known as ‘Papa,’ Pillar was the lynchpin of a secret fraternity connecting kilted soldiers, teenage tenors and Guinness brewery workers with the very highest officers of British power.

In 1884, prosecutions were brought against Gustavus Cornwall, the head of the Post Office in Ireland, Dublin Castle Detective Director JE French, and Pillar himself. French and Pillar were convicted, but Cornwall managed to escape to his estates in Scotland.

The prosecutions were closed to the public, who had to rely on newspaper reports curtailed by then considerations of ‘decency,’ leading to some sympathy for Pillar, aged over 60 at the time of his trial. Depositions from witnesses against him, not publicly available at the time, paint a less sympathetic picture, detailing accounts of quasi-rapes carried out by Pillar on young men made drunk on the wine he provided.

Pillar, a married man and father of a large family, led a remarkable double life, which may in fact have been even more lurid than the depositions indicate. In 1871 a dead baby was found in the basement return outside one of his residences, in circumstances which appear never to have been satisfactorily explained.

Hoping to cover some of the material from the 1884 trials later this week. The typed prosecution brief containing the depositions, annotated with notes taken by counsel during the trial, is available to read here

A photo of Pillar is also available here.

Image below of Rathmines Road, via Wikipedia. No 56 is one of the line of houses on the left of the image.