Norman Skelhorn

Sir Norman Skelhorn, KBE, QC (1909 – 1988) was the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales from 1964 to 1977.

Like all DPPs before him, Sir Norman was a QC. Among others, he defended Miss Noreen O'Connor, a state registered nurse who it was claimed in 1954 had murdered her friend Miss Friederika Buls, in what became known as the Loxton Murder.

Skelhorn was the son of a clergyman, he was educated at Shrewsbury School. He was called to the Bar in 1931.

Appointed DPP in 1964, in 1965, Sir Norman presented a paper to the Commonwealth and Empire Law Conference in Sydney, Australia titled "Crime and Punishment of Crime: Investigation of Offences and Trial of Accused Persons" in which he set out his agenda. These words came back negatively when, in Rupasinghe v. Attorney General the defence counsel in this case about violation of the right to silence, used the report in contrast to Sir Norman's 1972 role as a member of the eleventh Criminal Law Revision Committee.

One of the first cases Skelhorn dealt with was the August 1966 seizure by Scotland Yard's obscene publications squad of all copies of Aubrey Beardsley's erotic cards and posters they could find in a card shop on Regent Street. After Commissioner Sir Joseph Simpson went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to inspect the originals with pubic hair on display there, the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins had to spend time dealing with the media, while Sir Norman was so deeply unimpressed by the seized drawings that he promptly ordered the police to take them back to the shop.

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