The Public "I": BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

I have given up looking for “justice”. As proof of its nonexistence I offer you the “ostentatiously wealthy” British Labor politician John Lewis (above). Called an evil man and “vindictive” by one of his victims, his allies described the self made rubber millionaire as a "nasty piece of work", “one of the lowest forms of human existence I've ever met...” and “loathsome in every sense”. His “lack of personal...honesty or integrity” made him an “embarrassment to his political party”. In a “just” world John Lewis would have retreated after karma thoroughly kicked his ass in 1951. He did not.

That year, after four years of her husband's promiscuity and "odd" sexual proclivities, Lewis' fashion model wife, Joy Fletcher (above, left), left him for a female Swedish beauty queen (above, right). She later moved on to another male millionaire.

Shortly thereafter Lewis' (above) bruised ego was further offended when a traffic cop ordered him to stop at an intersection. Lewis ran his car into the officer's car, three times. His justification was that he was late for a vote. The public chastisement resulted in him losing his seat in October of 1951 . As I said, it was not a good year for John.

But Lewis avoided the productive introspection such justice suggested, by inventing a villain to blame for his just deserts. Lewis decided that the Joy (above) in his life had been seduced by the unlucky, undeserving and unrepentant Stephen Ward, because it had been Ward who had introduced Joy to that Swedish Beauty Queen. Lewis swore, “I will get Ward whatever happens”. In public.

The irony was that Stephen Ward (above) did not sleep with Joy Fletcher Lewis. In fact Doctor Ward ( he was an American trained osteopath) was not that interested in sex. We know this because that is the one thing Christine Keeler, one the most inventive, inveterate and inexhaustible liars in 20^th century England, never changed her story about. Stephen was honest.

The 18 year old show girl always said that although she and Stephen Ward slept in the same bed, it was always “like brother and sister.” She never claimed to have had sex with Stephen Ward. And this is notable because charting the admitted sexual contacts of this beautiful hedonistic exhibitionist narcissist would have exhausted a team of Public Health epidemiologists.

Christine Keeler (above) , in the words of her most famous victim, “seemed to like sexual intercourse”. She was uneducated, and uninterested in much beyond her own vagina. But in her chosen field she was an expert, the epiphany of common carnal knowledge It seems at times that this high school drop out had sex with every male in mid-century London, including Soviet secret agents, American military officers, London policemen, bankers, drug dealers, musicians, doctors, lawyers, even members of the British Cabinet.

And like a single woman Ponzi scheme, Christine's constantly crescive coitus circle eventually brought her into contact with the only male in London who wanted to hear this gorgeous uneducated woman speak. And he was the despised and despicable John Lewis.

Lewis and Christine had a meeting at a 1961 Christmas Eve party. Christine (above) was, as usual, concerned only with her own problems, which were not insubstantial. Two weeks earlier, a former boyfriend, Lucky Gordon, had fired “several shots” into the front door of the tiny apartment which Christine had once platonically shared with Stephen Ward.

The publicity generated by that gunfire had killed her affair with British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo (above)...

...as well as scaring off the other man she was concurrently sleeping with", Yevgeny Ivanov (above), a Soviet naval attache. Christine recalled later that John Lewis “could not have been more helpful....” that Christmas Eve. But the only five words John Lewis heard in Christine's hour long self absorbed diatribe was “Stephen Ward”, “John Profumo”, and “Soviet”. It was enough for Ward to promise the young fool £30,000 for names and dates of her sexual contacts with the two men , which Christine was happy to provide.

Meanwhile, the dreadful Lewis was still trying to get the London press interested in attacking Stephen Ward (above, left). But they were no more interested in Ward than the judge at Lewis' 1954 divorce case, who had dismissed Lewis' fantasies about Ward being a pimp for his wife, Joy Fletcher.

But by adding the name of Profumo to his vendetta, Lewis acquired an ally, in the Conservative Party political hatchet man, George Wigg (above).

Wigg scurried off to repeat Christian’s details to Conservative Party leader, Harold Wilson. And with his okay, Wigg then fed the “News Of The World” the story of a Liberal Party cabnet member who was having an affair with a woman who was also having an affair with a Soviet Spy.

Christine Keeler (above) met John Profumo while skinny dipping at a 1961 summer night pool party at Lord Astor's country estate. She had been invited as a guest of Stephen Ward, who was Lord Astor's osteopath and who rented a summer house on Astor's property.

Over that weekend, John Profumo got Christian Keeler's phone number, but the lady who was a tramp went home with another party guest, Yevgeny Ivanov, who was in fact a Soviet secret agent. Monday morning, Stephen Ward felt nervous enough to call his MI 5 contact to report the triangle that had formed in Lord Astor's swimming pool.

The three dominant sections of British Military Intelligence have always been MI 1, code making and breaking, MI 5, counterintelligence, and MI 6, intelligence gathering. In 1960 MI 5 thought they saw a chance to “flip” Yevgeny Ivanov, and they asked Stephen Ward, who knew Ivanov casually, to befriend him.

At their urging, Ward had invited Ivanov to the pool party at the Astor estate (above). But it was also Ward who warned the government that the Secretary of War might be dipping his wick into Christian Keeler, at the same time she was partying with the Soviet Agent they were interested in.

Christine (above) may or may not have slept with Ivanov. She did sleep with Profumo, but in her own words she saw him merely as “a screw of convenience.” Ward tried to penetrate her myopia to warn her how deep the water in the pool was by joking that she should ask Profumo when NATO was going to share nuclear weapons with the West German government.

Ward (above) knew Christine well enough to doubt the stunning brunette knew what NATO was, or West Germany, or even nuclear bombs. However Ward's little joke would come back to bite his own ass, with teeth that belonged to his sworn enemy, John Lewis.

During the summer of 1963 the London Press exploded with lurid details of Christine Keeler's sex life, her affair with John Profumo and a Soviet spy, both of which had been arraigned, said the press, by Stephen Ward. Christine was having a ball, feeding the press dark and sexy stories depicting Stephen Ward as her pimp and a tool for the Soviets. For an ego maniac, especially one as dim as Christine, it was a joy ride.

Not everyone was having as much fun. Yevgeny Ivanov was called back to the Soviet Union before the story exploded. Soviet officials usually showed little sympathy for secret agents who get their pictures on the front pages of London tabloids. John Profumo first denied his affair with Christine, and then resigned after admitting to it. Stephan Ward (above, left center) insisted he had been working for British Intelligence, who, of course, denied everything. The CIA treats their operatives the same way.

Eventually Stephen Ward was charged with “living off the earnings of an under aged female” - i.e. pimping children.

As Stephen's trial was starting, Christine was in another court room, testifying at Lucky Gordon's trial, charged with shooting Stephen Ward's front door. Eventually an appeals court would decided her testimony there had been unreliable, and probably perjury. But because the Foreign Office had yet to determine if national security had been breached (it had not), the damage to her reputation - such as it was - were considered proved, and the press lost interest in her.

But since left Stephen Ward's jury did not know that, they took her story that Ward had asked her to "to find out, through pillow talk, from Jack Profumo when nuclear warheads were being moved to Germany." as true. It wasn't.

Samuel Herbert (above), the Chief Inspector running the investigation broke quite a few rules, including threatening to destroy anyone who testified in support of Stephen Ward. And then, in his closing, the prosecutor reminded the jury that no one had come forward to defend Stephen. As if lack of evidence was evidence.

The entire trial was a travesty, and one judge later said the case should never have gone to the jury. But the damage had been done. Stephen Ward (above), took an overdose of sleeping pills. Rushed to the hospital he died two days later. But the jury was still allowed to convict the dead man.

That conviction helped to bring down the Liberal government, and made Harold Wilson (above) Prime Minister. Three years later 48 year old Inspector Herbert died of a heart attack. His will left only 300 pounds to his family. But his bank account contained 30,000 pounds, well over half a million dollars today. Where he got that much cash was never explained.

The night that Stephen Ward died, John Lewis celebrated with champagne in a London restaurant. There's political justice for you. Ironically, the vindictive man who created the entire mess, John Lewis, died of a heart-attack on 14 June, 1969. Until that moment, a lot of people would have said he didn't have a heart, just a liver filled with bile.

Most of the money Christine Keeler had been paid by the newspapers went to her lawyers. Convicted of perjury in December of 1973, Christine Keeler served 4 1/2 months in prison. By 1972 she had been married and divorced twice, and given birth to two children, who were largely raised by her mother.