The Sexual History of London (39 page)

As a result of the divorce, Margaret lost everything: her reputation, and her beautiful house in Mayfair.
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The scandal of Marg of Arg was overshadowed two weeks later on 5 June, when John Profumo was forced to stand up in the Commons once again. This time he confessed that he had misled the House and lied in his testimony. Profumo resigned from the cabinet and from his post as an MP. During a stormy cabinet meeting on 20 June, Duncan Sandys also offered to resign, admitting that he was in the frame as Marg of Arg's ‘headless man'. An exhausted Macmillan, fearing further scandal, refused to accept his resignation. (The identity of Margaret's headless lover was never fully revealed, although handwriting experts concluded in 2001 that he was Douglas Fairbanks Jr.)

In the wake of John Profumo's confession to the House of Commons, Stephen Ward was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings. When Ward went on trial at the Old Bailey on 22 July, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies were called to testify against him. It was while giving evidence that Mandy Rice-Davies made her famous quip: when the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied having an affair or having even met her, Mandy replied, with great spirit, ‘Well, he would, wouldn't he?'

Mervyn Griffith-Jones (the unsuccessful prosecutor in the Chatterley case) turned his forensic skills against Ward in his closing speech, a character assassination so devastating that Ward went home and took an overdose of sleeping pills. Three days later, on Saturday 3 August, he died. The trial was formally closed the following Monday, with no sentence pronounced, although Ward had been found guilty of living off immoral earnings, a verdict which the writer Ludovic Kennedy later concluded was a miscarriage of justice. After all, Christine received more money from Ward than he did from her; if anyone had been living off immoral earnings, it was her. Christine did not escape prosecution. She was found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to nine months in prison. Ward's lonely death was followed by an equally forlorn funeral: nobody came.

In September 1963, Lord Denning released an official government report into the Profumo affair. It was a best-seller, with hundreds of men queuing outside HM Stationery Office at midnight to get hold of a copy. A month later the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, resigned on the grounds of ill health.

The Profumo affair was the most spectacular example of the curious relationship between the establishment and the twilight world of the sex industry. (It was to have echoes a decade later, when Lord Lambton, a Tory MP, was forced to resign after evidence emerged that he had been seeing prostitutes and smoking cannabis with them. The revelations were enough to drive Lord Lambton into exile in Italy.) A more sensational revelation was to come in July 1964 when rumours of another compromising photograph began to circulate. The
Sunday Mirror
claimed that the photograph of ‘the peer and the gangster' was ‘the picture we dare not print' for fear of the libel laws. This was scarcely surprising: the paper's outrageous claim was that ‘the peer', a household name, was conducting a homosexual affair with London's most notorious villain.

A day or two later the German magazine
Stern
published a photograph of the mysterious couple, comfortably ensconced on a sofa, accompanied by a handsome if rather feral young man, whose name was Leslie Holt. Holt was a cat burglar. The gangster staring into the camera with those troubling eyes was Ronnie Kray. And the ‘household name' was Lord Boothby, an eminent Tory peer.
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When the photograph appeared, Boothby was faced with a dilemma. He admitted to having met Ronnie Kray during two or three business meetings, but flatly denied that they were having an affair. If he did nothing, it might seem as if he was admitting to the accusation; if he took the
Sunday Mirror
to court, he would endure a lengthy and expensive legal battle during which the tabloid hacks would rake up every aspect of his private life. And Boothby had a great deal to hide. He had fathered at least three children by the wives of other men, and conducted a long affair with Harold Macmillan's wife. The resulting daughter was brought up as the long-suffering Macmillan's own. Boothby was cheerfully unrepentant of his wicked ways. When Boothby's cousin, Ludovic Kennedy, called him ‘a shit of the highest order' to his face, Boothby merely rubbed his hands, chuckled and said, ‘Well, a bit. Not entirely.' But while high-society adultery was not uncommon, accusations of homosexual flings with career criminals were potentially lethal. The cabinet trembled and there was a council of war at Chequers as ever more ludicrous rumours flew around the House. Two back-benchers claimed they had seen Boothby and the Labour MP Tom Driberg cruising at a dog-track; worse still, it was claimed the pair were involved in a money-laundering scam with the gangs which operated at the track. Driberg, blatantly homosexual (he went after anything in trousers and refused to take no for an answer), was also close to the Krays. He was a regular at Ronnie's parties, where, according to his biographer, Francis Wheen, rough but compliant East End lads were served ‘like so many canapés'.
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With an election looming, the rumours about Boothby's private life must have seemed like a gift to the Labour Party, but Harold Wilson's shadow cabinet were in no position to take advantage of the situation. With a Labour victory on the cards, the last thing they wanted was to bring press attention to Driberg's antics. Labour leader Harold Wilson set his personal solicitor, Arnold Goodman, on the case. Goodman, known as ‘Mr Fixit', instructed Boothby to write an open letter to
The Times
denying the allegations in the
Sunday Mirror,
denying that he was homosexual and saying that he had met Ronnie Kray on only two or three occasions, by appointment, and in the company of other people. Boothby also wrote to the Home Secretary explaining that he had not known Kray was a criminal, and that he had responded to Kray's request to be photographed with him because he was a celebrity; the Krays' legitimate business consisted of running a string of nightclubs in the West End, and Ronnie adored having his picture taken with the rich and famous, from Judy Garland to Rocky Marciano.

After
The Times
published the letter, Goodman obtained an out-of-court settlement of £40,000 from IPC, owners of the
Sunday Mirror,
and a grovelling apology from the chairman. The cover-up spared Boothby's blushes, and it also protected the Krays; years later, veteran tabloid journalist Derek Jameson recalled that Fleet Street knew that the Krays were trouble and gave them a wide berth, referring to them only in passing as ‘those well-known sporting brothers'.

While the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police denied that there had been a police investigation of the Boothby–Kray affair, it later emerged that the Krays had been under investigation by Detective Chief Inspector ‘Nipper' Read since the beginning of the year. The Kray twins were arrested on 10 January 1965, charged with demanding money with menaces from a club owner in the West End and sent to court. But the Krays had friends in high places; not only were any potential witnesses too intimidated to testify against them in court, but Boothby himself stood up in the House of Lords and demanded to know how long the police intended keeping the Krays in custody. The only explanation for this behaviour, which resulted in uproar, is that the Krays were blackmailing Boothby. After a farcical trial and retrial (which found in favour of the defendants), the Krays were released. The twins maintained their grip over the establishment for another three years until they were eventually arrested and convicted in 1968 for the murder of a minor gang member, Jack ‘the Hat' McVitie.

 

While the Krays and other criminal gangs represented the most sensational aspects of London's criminal underworld, the prostitutes who worked for them continued to take massive risks with their personal safety and face arrest and imprisonment on a daily basis. The most vulnerable of these women were those who worked in Soho, which had continued to be the heart of the red-light district. In the 1940s and 50s, the girls worked the streets in time-honoured fashion. With the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 and the Street Offences Act 1959, they were compelled to change their tactics.

The Sexual Offences Act criminalized any house or flat ‘resorted to or used by more than one woman for the purposes of prostitution' and made it illegal to live off immoral earnings (as in the case of Stephen Ward). Unfortunately, this law was no respecter of relationships, so anybody whom the woman supported – be it mother, children or boyfriend – was liable to the charge.
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Meanwhile, the Street Offences Act was designed to force prostitutes off the street in much the same way as the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Under the Street Offences Act, a woman could be convicted of soliciting on the ‘uncorroborated word of a single policeman'. ‘Soliciting' was interpreted as covering ‘not only spoken words but also various movements of the face, body and limbs such as a smile, a wink, making a gesture and beckoning or wriggling the body in a way that indicates an invitation to prostitution'. After two cautions, a woman could be labelled ‘a common prostitute', a description which stayed on her record for life and could be read out in court, even during a rape or child-custody case.
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Challenged by these draconian new regulations, London's whores and their pimps hit on a solution. Instead of patrolling the streets, they took single rooms referred to as ‘walk-ups' and advertised their services on the doorway, just as the Roman prostitutes had done two millennia earlier. There were new descriptions for old acts: ‘French polishing' (fellatio) was a favourite, while punters were also offered ‘French lessons' or tempted with a little postcard that announced ‘Large Chest for Sale'. Prostitutes employed a maid, often a retired prostitute, whose task was to usher the punter upstairs and see him out again after the transaction had been completed.

One woman who learnt her trade in Soho was Cynthia Payne, or ‘Madam Cyn'. But when the authorities began to crack down on prostitution in central London, she cannily moved her operation to the suburbs, far from prying eyes. However, even Cynthia did not escape detection. In 1978, police raided her house in Ambleside Avenue, Streatham. Inside, they found a cross between a vicarage tea party and an orgy in full swing, with queues of middle-aged and elderly men, including clergymen, MPs and lawyers, waiting to exchange their ‘luncheon vouchers' for food, drink, strip shows and a trip upstairs with the girl of their choice. Charged with running the biggest disorderly house in London, ‘Madam Cyn' was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (reduced on appeal to six months and a fine). Cynthia, whose motto really should have been ‘Help the Aged', swiftly became a national treasure, partly as a result of her brilliant soundbites: ‘I always seem to fall for policemen,' she commented. ‘After every raid I got a new boyfriend.' Cynthia was up in court again in 1987, on nine charges of controlling prostitutes. The thirteen-day trial kept the nation entertained with tales of sex capers, slaves, transvestites and undercover policemen while many establishment figures sympathized with her plight, such as the Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens who found it ‘astounding that all this public money should be poured into bringing these charges'. When, after just five hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Cynthia of all charges the courtroom burst into applause. In a trial costing £117,000, the judge ordered costs to be paid from central funds, and Cynthia's £5000 legal aid costs to be reimbursed. As Cynthia emerged from court, she told a crowd of over a hundred well-wishers, ‘This is a victory for common sense. But I have to admit all this has put me off having parties for a bit.'
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‘Madam Cyn' (Cynthia Payne), the bawd of Streatham, leaving court in 1987.

While entrepreneurs such as Cynthia had fled, Soho continued to have a raffish reputation throughout the 1950s and 60s. There were the clip-joints, where unsuspecting tourists were lured into paying £300 a bottle for champagne which tasted suspiciously, in the words of the Kinks, ‘just like cherry cola'. There were the prostitutes themselves, the peep shows and the fifty-eight sex shops. There were the ‘private' cinemas, which operated like clubs, allowing patrons to watch films which had not got past the British Board of Film Censors; and there were the strip clubs. While the Windmill was forced to renege on its claim that ‘we never closed' by closing for good in 1964 and becoming the Compton Street Cinema, Raymond's Revue Bar opened on 21 April 1958 with a garish sign proclaiming it to be the ‘World Centre of Erotic Entertainment'. Raymond's first job in show business had been as a mind-reader on Clacton Pier, and this early exposure to male psychology must have provided some useful insights, as he became a millionaire by exploiting the public's fascination with sex. The ‘King of Soho's' empire included pornography, property development and the magazines
Razzle
,
Men Only
and
Mayfair
.