Christine Keeler

British party girl who had a short and sporty stint with the Rolls Royce and caviar crowd in 1963. She was noted for sharing her affections and her bed with both Russian Captain Eugene Ivanov, and British M.P. John Profumo. The ensuing scandal ruined Profumo's career and helped topple the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan. Christine was a war baby whose dad left for the Army. Her mom took up with a man whom Christine called Dad and they lived in a poorly converted railway carriage on the edge of a gravel pit in Berkshire. By 11 and 12, she was babysitting for neighbor kids when she first became familiar with adult male abuse. "The fathers," she said, "If they got me alone, would try to kiss and fondle me. I hated it." She developed an intense fear of her stepfather, avoiding him with a suspicion that never was overtly justified. She said that from the time she was 13, she never spoke to him or remained alone with him. At 16, Keeler became pregnant by a local boy. She tried to hide the fact and to abort her baby with a pen - with castor oil - gin and hot baths, unsuccessfully. When her secret came out her step dad confined her to her room for months. She had a premature labor in her own bed, making no sound for fear her step dad would hear. The baby boy was taken from her and died later in a hospital. In their village, her unmarried mother’s living arrangement and her own teen-age pregnancy insured them a place of disrespect, if not shame. After the baby, she left home. Christine was a beautiful child-woman at 17. She was working as a topless dancer when she was "discovered" by Dr. Stephen Ward, a flashy name-dropping society osteopath whose client-list included royalty and movie stars. As a sideline to celebrity back-cracking, Ward, 46, provided comely, willing companions for his wellborn friends. She trusted Ward and they had a caring relationship and she said that, although he called her his little alley cat, they never became lovers. Ward was enchanted with Christine and soon invited her to share his Marylebone flat, playing Svengali to her Trigby. One muggy July night in 1963 they were at the Thames-side cottage he rented on the grounds of the palatial Berkshire seat of Lord and Lady Astor when the Astors were entertaining Pakistani royalty and the esteemed War Secretary John Profumo. Chris was taking a nude swim and emerged with only a scant towel to what amounted to a chase and a game from Profumo, out strolling the grounds. The next day, she got a ride back to London with Ward's friend, Capt. Eugene Ivanov, 37, a tall, dark Soviet naval attaché rumored to be a KGB spy. At home, he made love to her, and the following Thursday, Profumo also became her lover. By her account, she slept with Ivanov only that once and Profumo, five times. She swears she did not take money for sex. Still the public saw her as a call-girl and the press paid her well for her kiss-and-tell version when the story broke. Ward was accused of pimping for Keeler and for Mandy Rice-Davies who was also living at his house. Among the "introductions" that Ward contrived, he arranged that Christine meet the West Indian café owner Lucky Gordon, who imprisoned and raped Keeler on two occasions, each time, she says, after Ward let him know where she lived. On 31 July 1963 Ward was found unconscious from an OD of Nembutal; he died three days later. For Christine, life went downhill. On 6 December 1963, Keeler received an 18-month prison sentence for committing perjury. When released, she took up with an unemployed 16-year-old boy for 18 stormy months. In 1965, she married laborer James Levermore from her home town; they had a son, James, the following year. The boy was raised by Keeler’s mother and she has no relationship with him. In 1971, she married wealthy metals manufacturer Anthony Platt but that marriage broke up in a year when their son, Seymour, was three months old. Keeler declares that there has been no men in her life since 1978, as she has only terror and contempt of men. She struggled as a single mother, with her second son becoming one of the saving graces of her life. Any money Keeler ever made from her name was given to her mother, she says, or lost to a crooked business manager. She spent many years dealing with the Inland Revenue about questions over earnings she never received. Over the years she tried to work in various jobs under her assumed surname, Sloane. She sold advertising space for a magazine, found a job as a receptionist in a dry cleaner’s and, in 1995, was a dinner lady at a school in London. When the headmaster discovered who she was, she was dismissed without explanation. "After that, I didn't have the confidence," she says. "I sold up and moved down to the sea, lived on the DSS for a while, but I hated that... never want to go back to that." On 3 March 1989, the film "Scandal" premiered, the story of her escapades taken from the book, "Honeytrap," which had been published in London and was scheduled for release in the U.S. in May She attended with son Seymour who was wearing a tuxedo jacket with his jeans and desert boots. America gave the film an X-rating, until the orgy scene was toned down enough to garner an R. Keeler hoped the book and film would turn her life around. Troubled by poverty for years, she had not been able to hold a steady job or keep a relationship going for more than a year. Since 1978 she had been living with Seymour in a poor section of London where she could rent a two-bedroom flat for the equivalent of $120 a week. Her beauty was gone and she spoke with a smoker's rasp. After the scandal she had changed her name to C.M. Sloane to gain some measure of privacy, at the same time still wanting the world hear her true story. By 1980, she was writing a magazine advice column for men with sex problems. She was again broke, but not broken. In early 2001, Keeler’s new, ghosted autobiography, "The Truth at Last: My Story," Sidgwick and Jackson, gave her another chance to bring out fresh allegations and revelations, most notably that she became pregnant by John Profumo, that Stephen Ward was a leading Soviet agent and that Sir Roger Hollis, then head of MI5, was working alongside him. She claimed that all the media and public wanted to hear was about the sex, not the betrayal and cover-up and that her story was one of espionage rather than titillation. Angry at the allegations of prostitution and that her life seemed outside of her control, she speaks in the third person of the incendiary beauty that she once was. "Even a criminal has a right to a new life, but not Christine Keeler," she remarked bitterly. The story may read like a James Bond thriller, but to Keeler, it is a tragedy. 2 February 1942: Christine Keeler was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex (birth date given as 22 February in "Secrets and Lies," the 2012 updated edition of the book). 1959: She meets Stephen Ward, osteopath to the rich and powerful, at Murray's nightclub where she is a showgirl. September 1960: Mandy Rice Davies starts work at Murray's. February 1961: Keeler moves into Ward's Wimpole Mews flat where she says she witnessed him meeting Eugene Ivanov, the director general of MI5 Sir Roger Hollis and Anthony Blunt. June 1961: Keith Wagstaffe, a Hollis underling from MI5, comes to Ward's Wimpole Mews flat. The security services have become suspicious of Ivanov and of Ward's friendship with him. Ward starts to see Keeler as a 'ticking bomb'. 8 July 1961: Ward introduces Keeler to John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, at Cliveden. Ward's aim was for Christine to find out from Profumo through 'pillow talk... when nuclear warheads were being moved to Germany'. October 1961: Keeler becomes pregnant by Profumo. She has an abortion three months later. 14 December 1962: Keeler's ex-boyfriend Johnnie Edgecombe tries to shoot her at the Wimpole Mews flat. The police are called and the attention of the media is drawn to Ward and the people (and agents) who come and go from his flat. 22 March 1963: Profumo makes a personal statement to the House of Commons denying his involvement with Keeler. 5 June 1963: Jack Profumo resigns. 30 July 1963: Stephen Ward obtains Nembutal and kills himself. 1963: Keeler is jailed for nine months for perjury. On 5 December 2017, Keeler's son Seymour Platt announced that his mother "passed away last night at about 11.30 p.m." at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Locksbottom, Greater London. She had been ill for some months, suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was aged 75. Link to Wikipedia biography