The death of Dr Stephen Ward last week has not set at rest the grave public disquiet which was caused by rumours and insinuations that the former Minister for War, Mr John Profumo and Lord Astor were not the only prominent figures to be linked with the twilight world of call girls, perverts and drug addicts through him. Fresh disclosures are threatened. That his erstwhile friends let him down in the hour of his greatest need has aroused the suspicion that they had so much to hide that they did not dare to face cross examination in the witness-box at the Old Bailey. In that sense Ward’s death was, as he himself saw it, a ritual sacrifice for the sins of many others.
As one who sat through the dreary proceedings of the case against Ward both at the committal magistrate’s court and at the Old Bailey, I can say that almost all the correspondents there felt that the whole thing was unreal. Some of them called it a circus. Hardly anyone of them could bring himself to believe that Ward, successful both as an osteopath and portrait painter and friend of the rich and internationally renowned for his dual talents, lived off the immoral earnings of call girls. The judge at the Old Bailey himself quoted that his earnings in 1962 amounted to £5,500. No one doubts he could have earned much more if he only cared. The evidence that was advanced on behalf of the prosecution was mostly contradictory and uncorroborated and came from vitiated sources since the witnesses were known to have perjured themselves and admitted to be under pressure from the police and contracted with newspapers.
As the trial at the Old Bailey was drawing to a close, there was a general consensus among the correspondents and the people in the public gallery that he would by acquitted though his own defence was admittedly poor and the summing up by the judge by no means favourable to him. If, in fact, Ward was sure, as he confided on the eve of taking the fatal dose of a drug, that he would be convicted, then he must have been among a very small minority indeed not only in the crowded court room, but also outside it who felt such certainty.
Suspicion
During the trial itself there existed a widespread suspicion that someone in authority was anxious to “get” him. The question is being asked who ordered the inquiry which led to Ward’s arrest, trial and finally suicide. Marilyn Rice-Davies deposed she was interviewed in this connection in early April when she was in jail on the charge of forging driving documents. This was within a fortnight of Profumo’s first lying statement in the House of Commons on March 22. Ward claimed Lord Astor had warned him as early as January or early February.
This might well be an unfair suspicion but it is linked with a series of strange events, strange that is, by British standards. The case against Edgecombe, the West Indian undergoing seven years’ imprisonment, was disposed of in the absence of the principal witness, Christine Keeler. He was charged with attempting to shoot her. This charge was dropped and he was tried for being in possession of a fire-arm with the intention to cause injury. To whom? No attempt was made to trace and bring back Christine Keeler who had mysteriously disappeared.
In the case of the other West Indian lover of Christine Keeler, Lucky Gordon, the police conveniently failed to trace two essential witnesses, one of whom was out on bail on the charge of living on immoral earnings. It is now on the basis of their statements to the police that he has been acquitted. These statements might have never been recorded and produced in the appeal court if the controversy had not arisen about the contents of Christine Keeler’s tape-recorded interview – running into some twenty hours with her former business manager.
Marilyn Rice-Davies, subject of one of the two charges on which the jury found Ward guilty, was held up on a petty charge of stealing a television set and liked to appear at the police station on the same date as Ward’s trial was to open so that she could be available for giving evidence. The charge was conveniently dropped after she had given the evidence.
To believe as many do that Ward was not guilty of the charges preferred against him except in the wholly technical sense that he kept company with public women is not to give him a bill for clean moral health. He himself confessed that his lust for women was so insatiable that when ones of better class were not available he picked up street walkers. Whether it was Keeler and Davies on the one hand and Vicky Barrett and Ricardo on the other, the technique was the same. He drew them, flattered and amused them and made them feel important.
Disappointed
He played Higgins of Shaw’s Pygmalion to Christine Keeler. He trained this girl of working class origin and no accomplishments to pass off as any one of them at the parties of the rich and powerful. When she yearned to return to her natural environment and left him for Edgecombe and Gordon, his vanity was deeply wounded.
The procession of young beautiful girls to his cottage at Lord Astor’s Estate at Cliveden were intended to impress his influential friends and thus cater to his vanity. Behind it all lay a deep sense of insecurity and emotional insatiability and some even believe sexual inadequacy that produced the compulsive urge to prove himself. It was painful for him to admit he was fifty.
At his trial, Ward’s counsel spoke of his two worlds. He was indeed a man of two worlds. He rubbed shoulders with the nobility with the same ease and grace with which he moved in the underworld of vice. He went to flats where orgies and erotic black magic ceremonies took place. He is known to have encouraged others in sexual abnormalities. He introduced Lord Astor to his present wife and Lord Ednam to his. Vicky Martin was introduced to the Maharaja of Cooch Bihar by him. He was sacrificed himself but the angry gods are far from propitiated.
The Times of India, 11 August 1963