Mandy Rice-Davies
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Profumo scandal
Marilyn Davies (21 October 1944 – 18 December 2014), known as Mandy Rice-Davies, met Christine Keeler at "Murray's Cabaret Club" (in Soho, UK) where she was a dancer. Mandy Rice-Davies introduced Keeler to her friend, the well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward, and to an ex-lover, the slum landlord Peter Rachman. Rice-Davies became Rachman's mistress and was set up in the house at 1 Bryanston Mews West, Marylebone, in which he had previously kept Christine Keeler. Rice-Davies often visited Keeler at the house she shared with Ward at Wimpole Mews, Marylebone, and, after Keeler had moved elsewhere, lived there herself, between September and December 1962. On 14 December 1962, while Keeler was visiting Rice-Davies at Wimpole Mews, one of Keeler's boyfriends, John Edgecombe, attempted to enter and fired a gun several times at the door. His trial brought attention to the girls' involvement with Ward's social set, and intimacy with many powerful people, including Viscount Astor at whose stately home of Cliveden Keeler met the War Minister John Profumo. Profumo's brief relationship with Keeler was the center of the affair that caused him to resign from the government in June 1963, though Rice-Davies herself never met him.
"Well he would, wouldn't he?"
Stephen Ward was found guilty of living off immoral earnings (money obtained from Rice-Davies and Keeler among others) – the trial having been instigated after the embarrassment caused to the government.
Whilst being cross-examined at Ward's trial, Rice-Davies made a riposte which has since become famous. When James Burge, the defense counsel, pointed out that Lord Astor denied an affair or even having met her, she dismissed this, giggling "Well he would, wouldn’t he?" (often misquoted "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?"). By 1979, this phrase had entered the third edition of the "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations", and is occasionally referred to with the abbreviation MRDA ("Mandy Rice-Davies applies").
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Mandy_Rice-Davies ]
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