Uncovered: The secret two-way mirror that gave a bedside view in Profumo affair flat
Pictures suppressed for 50 years show peephole in Stephen Ward’s home Scandal callgirl Christine Keeler recalls: ‘Who knew who might be looking in?’
THE traditional hunting-scene print on the sittingroom wall barely merits a second glance. And that, presumably, must have suited its owner just fine. For the unobtrusive picture’s true purpose was to conceal a ‘two-way mirror’ affording the voyeur a generous view of a bed that played a starring role in the Profumo Affair, the scandal that defined an era.
Published for the first time, these pictures show where this mirror was installed in society osteopath Stephen Ward’s Central London mews house. What happened in this impersonally furnished bedroom was central to one of the Old Bailey’s most celebrated courtroom dramas.
The jury in the infamous 1963 trial were asked to decide whether Ward lived off the earnings of girls he pimped out to his rich and powerful friends. The nation was enthralled. Although the jury never saw these pictures, they were made aware that the two-way mirror existed. The question was: Who was watching?
Even Christine Keeler, the model at the centre of the scandal, remains engrossed by the mystery, saying recently: ‘Who knew who might be looking in?’
The photographs of the two-way mirror are among a number taken by police in 1963 of Ward’s house. They have been suppressed by
‘It afforded a generous
view of the bed’
successive governments in a confidential file held in the National Archives for more than 50 years.
Had it not been for repeated representations over the past three months by The Mail on Sunday, they would have stayed under lock and key until 2046.
Taken by a Scotland Yard officer on June 27, a month before Ward’s trial, they were found by this newspaper among letters and statements included in a file labelled: ‘CRIM 1/4140’.
The images freeze the scandal in time. They show, outside the house in Bryanston Mews West – just behind Marble Arch – two Sixties relics: a Morris Minor convertible and a three-wheel Trojan bubble car.
They also show that if the police officers who searched Ward’s home that day anticipated finding an exotically appointed bordello, they were to be mistaken. With few personal touches, the bedroom and sitting room had the transitory air of cheap lodgings.
In one shot, there is a black-andwhite TV in the corner and on the coffee table letters lie next to an ashtray and a packet of Senior Service cigarettes. Everything seems unremarkable... were it not for the two-way mirror.
Along with Ward, two of the scandal’s key protagonists lived at the address at various times in the early 1960s. First, Ms Keeler, whose affair with Secretary of State for War John Profumo forced his resignation and effectively toppled Harold Macmillan’s government, and later her showgirl friend Mandy Rice-Davies. The architect’s plans for the house also feature in CRIM 1/4140. Clearly marked are the words ‘hole in the wall’ and its precise measurements.
Other documents, including statements made to Lord Denning during his official inquiry into the scandal that are still deemed too explosive for release, remain under lock and key.
After the judge’s summing up at his trial, Ward slunk away to a friend’s flat, wrote a suicide note and took an overdose of barbiturates.
Included in the file is a handwritten letter to the court written by a doctor at St Stephen’s Hospital, Chelsea, on July 31, the day afterwards. ‘This man has been admitted to this hospital this morning. He will be unfit to attend court today.’ In fact, he died three days later, not knowing he had been found guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and RiceDavies. These days few doubt that Ward was the victim of a miscarriage of justice, scapegoated by a self-righteous Establishment.
A campaign to overturn the verdict is currently being led by leading humanrights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC. At the same time, Andrew Lloyd Webber, similarly convinced of Ward’s innocence, has turned his story into a musical now showing in the West End.
Lord Lloyd-Webber said yesterday: ‘It is extraordinary in this day and age that so much material is still being held back.
‘It is time that all the documentation related to the case was released. We are, after all, talking about 2014. We are not living in the same climate as 1963.’
To some, there has never been a better time to shed whatever new light may be available on the murky episode. There has always been the suspicion that Scotland Yard, dutifully following orders from on high, were ‘out to get’ Ward. The file certainly suggests that they approached their task with gusto. Included in the file is a copy of Ward’s original charge
•
sheet. It features two previously unaired allegations: that Ward facilitated abortions – then illegal – for a Miss M and a Miss W. However the charges, for which there was no evidence, were dropped before the osteopath faced court.
At his trial, Janet Barker, 20, a known prostitute, told the jury that Ward brought her to Bryanston Mews to have sex with an unknown man. She also whipped him and ‘received £1 for each stroke’. Miss Barker confirmed that she saw a hole-in-the-wall but did not recall that it was hidden by either a mirror or a picture. Nevertheless, its existence was sordid enough in itself – particularly in 1963. And the inference was clear. Ward was on the other side of the wall, furtively looking on.
A month before the photographs were taken, a journalist, Warwick
‘Intimacy developed
into arousal’
Charlton, made reference to the mirror in a magazine article.
‘The bedroom is one of the strangest I have seen,’ he wrote. ‘Some previous occupant had made a large square hole through the bedroom wall to the drawing room. There is a one-way mirror from the drawing room looking in the bedroom. This elaborate peephole is hidden by a picture of Buddha and Stephen laughed when he saw me inspecting it. “That was installed by an old eccentric who used to own this place,” he said. “I’m going to have it filled in as soon as possible.”’
It seems Ward may well have been telling the truth about the hole’s provenance. The flat was refurbished some years earlier by his friend, Stephen Halsall, the chairman of the Eagle Building Society.
It was then sold to a company belonging to notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. And at some point afterwards, Dennis Hamilton, the sleazy former husband of Diana Dors and a friend of Rachman, moved in – and, according to Keeler, brought the mirror with him.
It had previously featured in the infamous sex parties Hamilton threw with Dors at their riverside mansion in Maidenhead, Berkshire. When the couple separated, Hamilton moved the mirror to Bryanston Mews.
Long before Ward took up residence, Rachman also lived at Bryanston Mews, first with Keeler then Mandy Rice-Davies. Other accounts suggest he, not Hamilton, installed the mirror.
In her autobiography, Secrets And Lies, published in 2012, Keeler reveals that she was aware of the mirror’s racy history before it was installed at Bryanston Mews.
Keeler wrote: ‘It had pride of place up on the sitting-room wall . . . It wasn’t until later that I found out the mirror had a crack in it – Diana [Dors], apparently, had broken it and it didn’t work any more’.
Ward was also a friend of Rachman and attended the Maidenhead sex parties with him where, accord- ing to the biography Connecting Dors: The Legacy of Diana Dors, ‘alcohol, erotic stimulants, willing starlets and exotic dancers contributed to a sexually charged atmosphere. The music throbbed, the dancing bordered on foreplay and inhibitions were suspended.
‘As intimacy developed into arousal, each couple was led to a special room and allocated 15 minutes, unaware that the room was fitted with two-way mirrors and their performance was a source of entertainment for select guests.’
Hamilton died in 1959 from tertiary syphilis. Like him, the mirror he brought to Bryanston Mews is long gone.
The house’s current owner, Gareth
Jones, 54, said yesterday: ‘When I moved in 12 years ago, the builders told me there had been a hole for the twoway mirror but I never knew whether to believe them.
‘At the time, there was 1970s-style wallpaper with no evidence that there was any hole there. It was just a flat surface. So I suppose it must have been filled in.’
What other secrets the scandal will yield in the future remains to be seen.
Geoffrey Robertson said yesterday that material was being held back for ‘irrational and wholly irresponsible reasons’, adding: ‘Stephen Ward was the scapegoat for the Profumo Affair and there continues to be a cover- up.’