Stephen Thomas Ward (19 October 1912 – 3 August 1963) was one of the central figures in the 1963 Profumo affair, a British public scandal which profoundly affected the ruling Conservative Party government. Ward introduced the married British cabinet minister and MP John Profumo to a showgirl named Christine Keeler at a house party hosted at Lord Astor's country home, Cliveden, in the summer of 1961. Profumo's subsequent sexual relationship with Keeler and his false statement to the House of Commons regarding its nature led to Profumo's resignation.

Following the Profumo scandal, Ward was charged with living off the profits of prostitution ("immoral earnings"). Ward committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping tablets on the last day of the trial.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Osteopath and portrait painter 1.2 Associations with young women 1.3 Profumo scandal 2 Alternative Theories of Death/Suicide/Murder 3 Cultural references 4 External links 5 References

[edit] Life

[edit] Osteopath and portrait painter

Ward was the son of Arthur Evelyn Ward, Canon of Rochester Cathedral. He was educated at Highgate School in London. In 1920 the family moved to Torquay when Ward's father became Vicar of St. Matthias.

Ward was sent as a boarder at Canford School, a public school in Dorset. He recalled being made a scapegoat for a serious assault on a fellow boarder, which a master later admitted Ward had clearly not been responsible for. This experience marked the young man. His father wanted him to go to university but at 17 moved to London instead. He found work as a carpet salesman in Houndsditch. In 1929 he moved to Hamburg and was employed as a translator in the German branch of Shell.

In 1932 Ward returned to London where he sold chests of Indian tea and subscriptions to The Spectator magazine. However, in 1934 he was persuaded by his mother to study at the Kirksville College of Osteopathy and Surgery in Missouri. The journalist, Philip Knightley, has claimed that "Ward helped deliver babies at remote farms, did surgery on kitchen tables, set bones broken during tornadoes and gave typhoid shots after floods devastated the area around the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers."

Ward was greatly impressed by the United States. He later commented: "I loved America and Americans, a warm-hearted, open and dynamic people. Their kindness and hospitality made me feel ashamed of the standoffish way the British treat people."

In 1940 Ward set-up as an osteopath in Torquay. The following year he volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) but was rejected as they did not recognise his American qualifications. He therefore joined the Royal Armoured Corps at Bovington. Ward was soon treating officers for muscle injuries and back trouble, until the actual RAMC Medical Officer lodged a complaint. Ward was court-martialled and berated the Army for failing to recognise Osteopathy. The Army appeased him: an extremely talented osteopath, he was commissioned as an officer ‘stretcher bearer’ in the RAMC.

In March 1944 Captain Ward was posted to India. Later that year he treated Gandhi for headaches and a stiff neck. Ward was impressed with Gandhi: "Although much of his policy was opposed to that of my own country. I knew that when I was with him I was in the presence of greatness, and my encounter with him was certainly the most important meeting of my life."

After the Second World War Ward worked for the Osteopathic Association Clinic in Dorset Square. His first private patient was Averell Harriman, after taking a call at the clinic that asked for the best ‘Osteopath in London’: Ward replied without hesitation, “that would be Stephen Ward”. It was not long before other famous people such as Winston Churchill, Duncan Sandys, Feliks Topolski, Ava Gardner, Mary Martin and Mel Ferrer became his patients. This enabled him to set up his own clinic in Cavendish Square, on the fringe of Harley Street.

Over the next few years he gained several other important patients. This included Lord Astor, who allowed him the use of a cottage on his Cliveden Estate. Other friends included Colin Coote, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, Roger Hollis, the head of MI5, Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Geoffrey Nicholson, the Conservative MP, Peter Rachman, the slum landlord and the actor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

On 27th July 1949, Ward married Patricia Mary Baines, a fashion model, at Marylebone Register Office. The relationship was not a success and after six weeks she moved out of Ward's flat at Cavendish Square. Ward used his social skills and his job as an osteopath to meet a number of rich and powerful members of society. He said. "I know a lot of very important people and am often received in some of the most famous homes in the country. Sir Winston Churchill and many leading politicians have been among my patients".

As a portrait artist, he had members of the Royal Family and politicians sit for him, including The Duke of Edinburgh, The Duke and Duchess of Kent and the Earl of Snowdon.

During the late 1940s Ward frequented the notorious Thursday Club, with a group of hard-drinking friends from top London society, including Prince Philip, the Marquess of Milford Haven and photographers Antony Beauchamp and Baron Nahum.^[1]

[edit] Associations with young women

Ward was attracted to pretty young women from lower-income backgrounds. At his trial he stated that he liked "pretty girls," and he claimed that he was "...sensitive to their needs and the stresses of modern living." Ward introduced these attractive young women to the rich and famous, aristocratic, charming and powerful men from the British establishment of the 1950s and early 60s. Ward had a series of girlfriends that included Eunice Bailey, the top Christian Dior model in the 1950s, Margaret Brown and Vickie Martin, who was killed in a car crash in 1955.

In her autobiography Dors by Diana, the actress Diana Dors mentioned the filming of the 1951 comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again, in which she starred. During filming in Folkestone in Kent Miss Dors met Jane Hart, a young starlet who had a small part in the film. Dors wrote that Jane Hart's boyfriend then was Stephen Ward. Dors did not take to him when she met him during filming, describing him as the "slick society doctor [sic] among the jet set".

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK (in 1955), had a walk-on part in the same film. It is claimed that Ruth Ellis was being run by Stephen Ward, a decade before his name became public in the Profumo affair.^[1]

[edit] Profumo scandal

One of Ward's protégés, a showgirl named Christine Keeler, moved into Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat, and had a platonic relationship with Ward. Ward also lived with a young woman named Mandy Rice-Davies, to whom Ward at one time proposed marriage. In July 1961 Ward held a pool party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by Viscount Astor. At the party Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War. Profumo began having sexual relations with Keeler, unaware that she might also have been having sexual relations with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the embassy of the Soviet Union. Since Ward was co-operating with MI5 to entrap Ivanov, Profumo's affair quickly become known in establishment circles. Rumours about Profumo's relationship with Keeler became public in 1962.

After an initial statement of denial to the House Commons, Profumo was forced to admit that he had lied, and had no alternative but to resign (June 1963) from both the government and his Parliamentary seat. In the fallout of the Profumo scandal Ward was arrested in June 1963 in Watford and taken to Marylebone Lane police station. He was charged: ‘That he, being a man, did on divers dates between January 1961 and 8 June 1963, knowingly live wholly or in part on the earning of prostitution... contrary to... the Sexual Offences Act 1956.’ Other charges of procuring prostitutes followed, and at Marylebone Magistrate's Court he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey, beginning on 22 July. Soon after the trial began MI5 denied that Ward had informed them of Profumo's affair.

Some of those involved in the Profumo affair, such as Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, were called as witnesses at the trial. Also giving evidence were prostitutes Ronna Ricardo and Vickie Barret. In the course of the trial Ricardo withdrew her allegations against Ward of procuring, and Barret's similar allegations were shown by the defence to be specious.^[2] Following a harsh attack on his character in the closing speech of the prosecuting counsel, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Ward took an overdose of sleeping tablets on the night before the last day of the trial, and was found in a coma the next morning. Since there were no further instructions required to be given by the defendant to his own counsel, the judge ruled that the trial would proceed in the defendant's absence, and after summing up, he sent the jury to deliberate. Ward was still in a coma on Wednesday 31 July, when the jury reached their verdict of guilty of the charge of living on the immoral earnings of Keeler and Rice-Davies. The charges of procuring (i.e. of being a pimp) were rejected. The trial was then adjourned until such time as Ward might be fit to return to court. Three days later, on Saturday 3 August, Ward died in St Stephen's Hospital. On Monday 5 August the trial was formally closed with no sentence pronounced.^[3] In his book on the trial, Ludovic Kennedy considers the guilty verdict to be a miscarriage of justice, and points out that Keeler received more money from Ward than he did from her, so that rather than Ward living on her earnings it was she living on his.^[4]

Shortly after Ward's death, a pornographer named Freddie Reid mounted an exhibition of Ward's pictures, which was alleged to include compromising pictures of well-known individuals. However, Reid held a private viewing and sold many of the pictures before they were made public.^[5] In her 2001 autobiography, Keeler claimed, without supporting evidence, that the MI5 chief Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy and that Ward ran a spy ring which included Hollis and Sir Anthony Blunt.

[edit] Alternative Theories of Death/Suicide/Murder

The entertainer Michael Bentine, who worked as an intelligence officer for MI9 under Airey Neave during the Second World War and had known Ward for sometime, kept up his contacts after the war, later commented: "A Special Branch friend of mine told me Ward was assisted in his dying. I think he was murdered."

Paul Mann, a close friend of Stephen Ward, says he was told shortly after his death, that "Ward was injected with an air bubble, by hypodermic, with the intention of causing a fatal embolism. The needle broke, and the assassins left in a hurry. It was enough, though, to send the drugged Ward on his way. It was a botched affair."

Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert died of a heart attack on 16th April 1966 at the age of 48. In his will he left only £300, which was commensurate with the police salaries at that time. However, after his death his bank account was discovered to contain no less than £30,000 (£660,000 by today's values). According to Philip Knightley: "By coincidence, in the tape recordings which Christine Keeler made with her manager, Robin Drury, Keeler says that John Lewis, Ward's bitter enemy, had offered her £30,000 for information leading to Ward's conviction and the bringing down of the Conservative Government."

In 1987 Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril published their book on the Stephen Ward case, Honeytrap, the Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward. During their research they managed to speak to several members of MI5, including Keith Wagstaffe, Ward’s case-officer. The book confirms that Ward had been involved in an operation that was attempting to persuade Eugene Ivanov to become a double-agent.

As a result of the book being published the authors were contacted by a former MI6 officer who claimed that Ward was murdered by a contract agent called Stanley Rytter, whose cover was as a freelance journalist and photographer. Rytter had died in 1984 but Summers and Dorril investigated the allegation and got the story confirmed by one of his associates, Serge Paplinski.

The intelligence officer then went on to say: "It was decided that Ward had to die.... He admitted (Rytter) that Ward was killed on the instructions of his department. He convinced Ward that he ought to have a good night's sleep and take some sleeping pills. The agent said he let Ward doze off and then woke him again and told him to take his tablets. Another half an hour later or two, he woke Ward again, and told him he'd forgotten to take his sleeping pills. So it went on - till Ward had overdosed. It might sound far-fetched, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Once the victim is drowsy he will agree to almost anything."

Serge Paplinski told Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril "Stanley (Rytter) was there with Ward on the last night... he always said that Ward was poisoned." His daughter, Yvonne Rytter recalled being taken to St Stephen's Hospital as Ward was dying. She recalls someone coming up and saying; "That's it. He's dead."

[edit] Cultural references

Ward was played by the actor John Hurt in the 1989 film Scandal, which told the story of the Profumo affair. He is mentioned several times (as "Stephen") in the film's theme song, "Nothing Has Been Proved", written by The Pet Shop Boys and sung by Dusty Springfield, which became a Top 20 hit in the UK. Ward also appears as a character in Anthony Frewin's 1997 novel London Blues. His life was the subject for a music theatre piece "That Man Stephen Ward" (2006-7) by the British composer Thomas Hyde.

[edit] External links

• BBC Video of news of Ward's arrest
• Files of Operation Bowtie, FBI investigation into Profumo affair.
• Sketch portrait of Christine Keeler by Stephen Ward at the National Portrait Gallery

[edit] References