Dial S for Squalor

The subdued, oak-paneled court room with its blur of bobbing white wigs and ceremonial gowns has been pictured in a hundred books and movies. The familiar scene was set again last week when the grey-wigged judge, Sir Archie Marshall, took his seat beneath the arched white ceiling of the No. 1 Courtroom and nodded for the trial to begin. But few Old Bailey trials, real or imagined, have even remotely resembled Regina v. Stephen Thomas Ward.

Oscar Wilde, whose trial for sodomy took place in the same courtroom, defined a cynic as one "who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." The phrase seemed curiously applicable to the protagonists in the Ward case: voluptuous Christine Keeler, 21, whose affair with War Secretary John Profumo had come close to toppling Britain's government in June; her sister-in-sin, blonde, baby-faced Mandy Rice-Davies, 18, whose grinning tart-tongued answers were delivered as if the trial were a benefit performance; and their obliging friend, artistic Osteopath Stephen Ward, 50, whose vigorous pursuit of high-society friendships and a satyr's sex life had brought him to the defendant's dock, charged with three counts of living on immoral earnings and two counts of procuring girls under 21. Their testimony, and that of the assorted trollops and clients who paraded through the witness stand, was perhaps the most detailed accounting of the wages of sin ever offered outside a brothel countinghouse.

Money for Mother. The trial was, from the outset, less concerned with morality than semantics. Indeed, Stephen Ward is, by his own cheerful ad mission, a "thoroughly immoral man." Under the stiff British law aimed at discouraging pimps, a man who habitually consorts with prostitutes is automatically assumed to be taking at least part of their income unless he can prove himself innocent. The Crown's case against Ward was that he had at various times shared his Wimpole Mews apartment with Christine and Mandy, urged them and several other women to sell themselves to men of his acquaintance and to enlist other underage girls to do the same, presumably for his own profit. Ward's defense was that he himself was partial to young girls, had lent his pals more cash than they had ever repaid ("I was a fool with money"), and had never condoned their prostitution. Besides, what is a prostitute?

Occasionally shaking her red mane across a stylish old-gold gown, Christine admitted that she had been kept by Slum Lord Peter Rachman; at other times, said she, her rent had been paid by Lord Astor and a Persian lover. Once, when she was short of money, said Christine, she went at Ward's suggestion to a man named Charles and received $140 for sleeping with him. On several occasions, a middle-aged businessman testified, he had paid Christine between $28 and $42 for having intercourse with him in Ward's apartment. Jack Profumo had given her "money for my mother." But she hotly denied that she was a prostitute.

As for Ward's share of the take, she declared: "I usually owed him more than I ever made. I only gave him half of that." However, she said, Ward had repeatedly told her he was short of money; he also encouraged her to "go and get" girls for him. Two other witnesses indicated they had been recruited in this fashion.

Nothing Wrong? Gradually, under punishing attack from velvet-voiced Defense Counsel James Burge, her coolly elegant fac,ade began to crumble. Toward the end of her testimony, a booing crowd outside the Old Bailey even hurled a couple of eggs in her direction. Mandy, by contrast, plainly relished every moment in the limelight. In her first few minutes of testimony, she said casually that she had made love to Lord Astor as well as Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (Both men later denied her claim.) To Burge's sardonic suggestion that she had only brought in Fairbanks' name to boost the price of her newspaper confessions Mandy sweetly disagreed. The reason for naming him was simple: "I do not like him."

Mandy said that the osteopath had remained in the apartment when she made love to Astor. "It is quite normal, isn't it?" she shrugged. "There is nothing wrong with it." However, she testified, apart from paying Ward $17 a week rent for her room and buying the food, she did not give the osteopath more than $70 in the four months of last year that she shared the flat with him.

Lass & Lash. The weirdest tale of all was told by Vickie Barrett, one of the few performers who made no bones about being a prostitute. Drab, docile Vickie (nee Janet Barker) testified that Ward had picked her up one night and taken her back to his apartment to have intercourse with a man who was wait ing naked in the bedroom. In all, said the prosecution, Vickie had some 30 assignations in Ward's apartment but never saw any proceeds; the osteopath pocketed the money, said she, on the pretext of saving it for her.

In the case of many "middleaged or elderly" customers at the Mews, Vickie testified, she stripped down to her underwear and high-heeled shoes and lashed them with a cane or a horsewhip. The market price for that, she said matter-of-factly, "was -L-1 [$2.80] a stroke."

Vickie was clearly the prosecution's strongest witness until beautiful, blonde Sylvia Parker flew dramatically back from Italy to declare that Vickie's testimony was "a load of rubbish." The ex-mistress of a murdered Soho mobster, Sylvia testified that she had been living in Ward's apartment during the time when Vickie Barrett claimed to have been using it for assignations, and had never seen the prostitute there.

Tarts' Target. Stephen Ward, a suave, composed witness in his own defense, said he was only "trying to help" by introducing the girls to middle-aged friends. In fact, though he himself had been the first to inform government and opposition leaders that Profumo had lied in denying his relationship with Christine, Ward said on the stand that he had only "a shrewd idea" that they were actually sleeping together, and was horrified when he learned that cash had changed hands. Ward said he even doubted that Christine had slept with Soviet Naval Attache Evgeny Ivanov. "Like a lot of people," purred Ward, "she tells a story often enough and comes to believe it and does tell lies." In any case, he insisted, it was "inconceivable" that he would pimp for his friends.

In 51 hours of relentless questioning by Prosecuting Counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Ward's composure was seldom shattered. Asked about Vickie Barrett, he burst out: "If this girl is telling the truth, then I am guilty. My case must depend on saying this girl is lying." Drumming nicotine-stained hands on the dock rail, Ward declared that Christine, Mandy and half a dozen other witnesses who testified against him were motivated by malice or greed. He cried, "Anyone who comes in from the street can come forward and say I am lying."

By week's end, when the trial recessed, it had become virtually the only topic of conversation in Britain. A show of his portraits, including those of such celebrities as Sophia Loren, Prince Philip, Mandy, and Canada's ex-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, was a near sellout, raised an astonishing $25,000 for Ward's defense. This week a sober-looking jury of eleven mostly middle-aged men and one woman will decide whether talented Stephen Ward is a pimp and a procurer or just a jolly bohemian.

If convicted, Ward faces up to 25 years in prison--a virtual life sentence at his age. If acquitted, his agent solemnly announced last week, the energetic osteopath will make a lecture tour of the U.S. His topic: "The Current State of Morality in Britain."

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