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Thursday, March 06, 2025

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 Joy (above) had been seduced by an 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 20th 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 (above), 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 (above).
And with Wilson's okay, Wigg then fed the “News Of The World” the story of a Liberal Party cabinet member who was having an affair with a woman who was also having an affair with a Soviet Spy.
Christine Keeler met John Profumo while skinny dipping at a 1961 summer night pool party at  Lord Astor's country estate (above).
Christine 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.
At that party, John Profumo (above) 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 Christina's 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.  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.
She died at 76 years of age, on 5 December, 2017, of  chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, just another victim of John Lewis' hunger for revenge.
- 30 - 

Wednesday, March 05, 2025

GETTING AHEAD - Oliver Cromwell's Post mortem Travels:

 

I would call it the definitive way of dealing with a swelled head. Oh sure, on his death bed Oliver Cromwell admitted to some doubts. But Oliver's doubts were long over due.  

All his life Oliver had been such an imperious narcissistic autocrat that,  in retrospect, the despotic and conceited Charles I now seemed reasonable - once Oliver had chopped off the head that wore the crown. 

But then Oliver went on the ultimate ego trip, launching a bloody war trying to eradicate Catholicism from Ireland. He would have had better luck trying to reintroduce snakes. Oliver was so supercilious that in 1650 he wrote to a Scottish opponent, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken,” and just three years later he suffered no such introspection while making himself dictator, because, “…the spirit of god (was) so strong upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood.” Flesh and blood has bowels. Oliver, it seems, did not. It turns out the one nation Oliver never even attempted to conquer was gall.

And then,  at the age of 59, on his death bed, on the afternoon of 3 September, 1658, at long last, Oliver was beset by humility (as well as a urinary tract infection – which is what kills you when you don’t have antibiotics). Oliver whispered, “My design is to make what haste I can to be gone.” But it was too late to be hasty. Even dead, Oliver could not escape the judgment of those who had suffered under his turgid arrogance.

His corpse was entombed in Westminster Abbey, along with all those kings and queens he thought himself superior to. His followers attached a plate to his coffin reading “Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland”, so that on Judgment Day there would be no chance Oliver would be overlooked. They might as well have planted a big arrow above his crypt that read “Dig Here!” 

Judgment day arrived less than three years later. As soon as Charles II was crowned king, he had 12 of those who had participated in his father’s trial tried for high treason. 

The inevitable executions which followed produced a macabre precursor of Super Bowl Week. From Monday October 8th through Saturday the 13th , 1660 (on the old Julian calendar), the twelve still living were each subjected to what contemporary witness William Harrison described as “The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England….

...drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled..., where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down…”. It wasn’t until after the hanging that the festivities really got started. 

The guest-of-dishonor was stretched naked on a butcher block table. First, his genitalia were removed and displayed to him. They were then thrown into a fire. Then, according to English Wikipedia, “A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious…A large cut was made in the gut…and the intestines would be spooled out on a device that resembled a dough roller. Each piece of organ would be burned before the sufferer's eyes...

, and when he was completely disemboweled, his head would be cut off.” And not quickly removed, with a single swipe of a massive sword or an axe, but via repeated whacks with a meat clever. The idea was not to kill the unfortunate honoree, but to torture him, and thus to entertain the crowd.  

This was a spectator sport, drawn out for hype and hyperbole. Samuel Pepys was there for the anticlimax. He noted in his diary, “Saturday 13 October…went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered…He looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy…After that I went…home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.” Ah, violence. Where is thy operate conditioning?  

Oliver Cromwell, being legally and retroactively the villain-in-chief would not be spared these humiliations just because he was deceased. He was spared the pain, but then there had been the urinary tract infection. On the morning of 30 January, 1661 Oliver’s corpse and those of two of his fellow deceased co-conspirators, were hung by their necks at Tyburn, the traditional place of execution for “commoners”. Ouch, that little insult must have hurt. The un-dearly departed hung in public, like hams in a smoke house, until four in the afternoon. Then their heads were removed; I presume they cut off Oliver’s last, as we are told it took eight chops. The poor executioner must have been pretty near shagged out from removing the first two heads.  

After this academic execution, Oliver’s corpse was discarded into a pit and his head was raised upon a 20 foot wooden pole above the south side of Westminster Palace. Finally, Oliver was as aloof as he had always imagined himself to be, head and shoulders above all other contenders...except he no longer had shoulders. And there he bobbled about in summer and winter, in drought and rain storms until at least 1672, by which time it seems, people had begun to forget just whose head was which head.

Legend claims that Oliver Cromwell’s decapitated skull was blown down in a storm in 1672 and Oliver’s dome rolled into the hands of Mr. John Moore, a guard, who snuck the coconut home and stuffed the noggin up his chimney. When it was realized that the arch villain Oliver Cromwell had somehow escaped, rewards were offered and notices posted demanding and threatening punishments unless he were returned to his post of shame. 

To remain discreet, Mr. Moore gave the head to an apothecary in King Street, who then sold Oliver’s skull to a Mr. Humphrey Dove, Esq.  Lawyer Dove kept Oliver confined to a chest until his death in 1687 – Mr. Dove’s death that is. After this it appears that Oliver made a clean getaway, no mean feat for a man with no feet.. Or a torso. 

In 1710 a Claudius Du Puy opened a museum of curiosities in London containing as its most curious curiosity of all, the head of Oliver Cromwell.  Or so the broadsides claimed.

That the exhibit was a financial failure was no fault of Oliver’s. He did his part. He was still dead. but he  had no body to support him . Was this head really Oliver’s head? Or was it an imposter’s skull masquerading as the demon Protestant?  

It would not be until the 1930’s that two scientist issued a 109 page report authenticating to a “moral certainty” that the head in question was unquestionably the head of Oliver Cromwell. 

And on 25 March  1960 Oliver’s morally certain head was finally buried somewhere near the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, England. 

And nobody will admit to knowing exactly where.  

And that anonymity must be driving the arrogant Oliver Cromwell, out of his skull! 

                                     - 30 -

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