Like few men or women who wind up in the prisoner's dock at the Old Bailey, Stephen Ward was educated, charming and gifted. What destroyed him, and turned a merely sordid morals case into the trial of the decade, was none of the conventional or even unconventional deadly sins. It was a compulsive, consuming snobbery.
To hobnob with the rich and famous and sprinkle his conversation with first names of peers, maharajahs and Cabinet ministers, the suave, artistic osteopath would go to any lengths, or depths. A man of unbounded vanity himself,...
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