Christine Keeler (22 February 1942 – 4 December 2017) was an English model and topless showgirl whose concurrent affairs with a Soviet naval attache and the British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, led to the Profumo affair of 1963.
Biography[]
Christine Keeler was born in Uxbridge, Middlesex, England in 1942, and she was raised by a single mother in a home formed by two former railroad carriages. She suffered from sexual abuse when she was young, and she became a model at a London dress shop at the age of 15. At age 17, she gave birth to a child with an African-American US Air Force sergeant, and their child died at the age of six days. She was later employed as a topless showgirl at Murray's Cabaret Club, and she met the osteopath Stephen Ward at the cabaret. The two of them lived together, but it was a platonic relationship, and she met Secretary of State for War John Profumo in 1961. Keeler had short sexual relationships with both Profumo and the Soviet naval attache Yevgeny Ivanov, and she later had relationships with jazz singer Aloysius Gordon and jazz promoter Johnny Edgecombe. In December 1962, after her relationship with Edgecombe ended, Edgecombe shot at her house, drawing attention to Keeler and her relationships. Soon, attention was drawn to her political lovers, leading to the 1963 Profumo affair, which ended Profumo's political career. She served four and a half months in jail in 1964 for perjury, and she would have two failed marriages and two children before going on to live alone. She died in 2017 at the age of 75.