Profumo affair a fellow Murray's Club dancer three years her junior. The two girls left Murray's, and attempted without success to pursue careers as freelance models. Keeler also lived for short periods with various boyfriends, but regularly returned to Ward, who had acquired a house in Wimpole Mews. There she met many of Ward's friends, among them Lord Astor, a long-time patient who was also a political ally of Profumo. She often spent weekends at a riverside cottage that Ward rented on Astor's country estate, Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire. Stephen Ward, born in Hertfordshire in 1912, qualified as an osteopath in the United
John Profumo tradition of respecting the private lives of British politicians, for fear of libel actions, was maintained until March 1963, when the Labour MP George Wigg, claiming to be motivated by the national security aspects of the case, taking advantage of Parliamentary privilege, which gave him immunity from any possible legal action, referred in the House of Commons to the rumours linking Profumo with Keeler. Profumo then made a personal statement in which he admitted he knew Keeler but denied there was any "impropriety" in their relationship and threatened to sue if newspapers asserted otherwise. Profumo's statement did not prevent newspapers