Ward’s road from Irish gentry to society pimp
The scion of a landed family became notorious for his role in a scandal that launched the ‘Swinging 60s’,
STEPHEN Ward, portrayed as a dark and malign figure in the life and downfall of the beautiful young Christine Keeler, reported here last week, was the wayward son of an English vicar and Irish mother, who came from a distinguished Irish landed family.
Eileen Esmee Vigors was born in 1881 in Burgage, a manor house on an estate near the town of Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow. She was the youngest of four children of Thomas Mercer Vigors and Louisa Handcock, who were married in St Stephen’s Church in Dublin.
Her father was later described as “rather a rake, a confirmed gambler and obviously excellent company” by his grandson, Sir Wilfred Thesiger, the writer and explorer who was the son of Eileen Esmee’s elder sister, Kathleen Mary.
Writing in Carloviana, the magazine of the Carlow Historical Society (2011), Victor Connolly relates the story of how, when his wife caught him in bed with one of the maids, Vigors justified it saying: “If one is going to appreciate Chateau Lafite, my dear, one must occasionally take a glass of vin ordinaire.”
Apparently the rather severe Louisa got over that dalliance but was less impressed when he plunged much of the family fortune on his horse The Baron, beaten into second place as the 5/4 favourite in the 1887 Epsom Derby.
She left Burgage, bringing Eileen Esmee and her three other children to live between a flat in London and a family home in the country. Eileen Esmee made frequently trips back to Carlow to holiday with her wayward but entertaining father and all his children were devoted to him.
Her elder brother, the Oxford educated Edward, who later inherited the Carlow estate which had been in the family for centuries, was academically brilliant if a little eccentric.
According to Victor Connolly, who now owns the house, Edward was High Sheriff of Carlow in 1916 and commuted between Carlow and London where he rose to become Principle Clerk of the House of Lords.
Eileen Esmee married the Rev Arthur Ward in 1909 and they had one son, Stephen, born in 1912, who would become one of the most notorious figures of the Swinging Sixties when the Profumo scandal erupted at the heart of British society.
He appeared to be a rebellious young man and refused to obey his father’s orders to go to university, opting to work at a variety of jobs and hang around Soho nightclubs with beautiful young women. His mother eventually persuaded him to go to America and study to become an osteopath.
Although a talented and agreeable man, he appears to have inherited his grandfather’s rakish charms and soon became a “society osteopath”, meeting and treating Gandhi, Sir Winston Churchill, Ava Gardner and, more importantly, Lord Astor, whose stately home Cliveden became a playground for him and his beautiful nymphs. He was also an accomplished portrait artist and members of the royal family sat for him.
His mother died in 1955. Her brother Edward, who died in the front garden of their ancestral home, was buried in the Vigors family vault in the Church of Ireland cathedral in Old Leighlin which was then sealed up as, dying childless, he was the last of the line.
The house then passed to an English branch of the family headed by Terence ‘Tel’ Vigors who took up residence, became a prominent figure in Irish racing circles before selling the house and estate in 1987 to move back to England.
His younger brother Tim, a colourful RAF fighter pilot during the Battle of Britain, also came to Ireland after the war, taking over Coolmore Stud in Co Tipperary, where he bred Rheingold, a winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Married four times at the age of 72 he described his ideal night out as “a Lloyd Webber musical, dinner at San Lorenzo and a bop with the lovely wife at Annabel’s”.
The aforementioned Lloyd Webber would go on to write a musical Stephen Ward about his not so distant cousin. He sold Coolmore to his friend Vincent O’Brien, his son-inlaw John Magnier and pools tycoon Robert Sangster, who built it into the world’s most successful stud farm.
As if to add to the mystique of the family, Victor Connolly writes that the drawing room at Burgage was where Cecil Frances Alexander wrote the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. However various other locations, including Markree Castle in Co Sligo also claim that distinction.
But whether he was a society osteopath or, as others put it, “a society procurer” Ward left behind an unsavoury legacy that was far from bright or beautiful.
“The truth is that I loved people of all types and I don’t think there are many people the worse for having known me,” he said shortly before his trial in 1963. Convicted of “living off immoral earnings” he took an overdose of barbiturates and went into a coma, dying at the age of 51 on August 3, 1963, before sentenced could be passed on him.
The death this month of Christine Keeler, who Ward had first met as a teenager “walking around naked” in Murray’s Cabaret Club in London’s Soho, brings the enthralling saga to a conclusion... for now.