Ward was the son of Arthur Evelyn Ward, Canon of Rochester Cathedral. He was educated at Highgate School in London and qualified to practice as an osteopath in Missouri. In 1949 he married Patricia Mary Baines, who he later divorced. Ward used his social skills and his job as an osteopath to meet a number of rich and powerful members of society. He stated that "I know a lot of very important people and am often received in some of the most famous homes in the country. Sir Winston Churchill and many leading politicians have been among my patients". As a portrait artist, he had members of the Royal Family and politicians sit for him, including Prince Philip, The Duke and Duchess of Kent and Lord Snowdon. During the late 1940s, Ward frequented the notorious Thursday Club,with a group of hard-drinking friends from top London society, including Prince Philip, the Marquis of Milford Haven and photographers Antony Beauchamp and Baron Nahum.
Ward was attracted to pretty young women from lower-income backgrounds. At his trial on the charges of living on the avails of immodest activities, he stated that he liked "pretty girls," and he claimed that he was "...sensitive to their needs and the stresses of modern living." Ward introduced these attractive young women to the rich and famous, aristocratic, charming and powerful men from the British establishment of the 1950s and early 60s.
One of Ward's protégés, a showgirl named Christine Keeler moved into Ward’s Wimpole Mews flat, and had a platonic relationship with Ward. Ward also lived with a young woman named Mandy Rice-Davies, to whom Ward at one time proposed marriage. In July 1961, Ward held a pool party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by Viscount Astor. At the party, Ward introduced Keeler to John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War.
Profumo began having sexual relations with Keeler, unaware that she was also having sexual relations with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the embassy of the Soviet Union. Since Ward was cooperating with MI5 to entrap Ivanov, Profumo's affair quickly become known about in establishment circles. Rumours about the Profumo's relationship with Keeler became public in 1962.
It is claimed that Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK (in 1955), was being run by Stephen Ward, a decade before his name became public in the Profumo affair.
Profumo was forced to resign and the Conservative government lost the next election to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. In the fallout of the Profumo scandal Ward was arrested in June 1963 in Watford and taken to Marylebone Lane police station. He was charged: ‘That he, being a man, did on diverse dates between January 1961 and 8 June 1963, knowingly live wholly or in part on the earning of prostitution... contrary to... the Sexual Offences Act 1956.’ Other charges of procuring prostitutes followed, and he was put on trial, first at Marylebone Magistrate's Court and then, on July 22, at the Old Bailey. MI5 denied that Ward had informed them of the affair soon after the trials began.
Some of those involved in the Profumo affair, such as Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, were called as witnesses to the two trials. Also giving evidence were prostitutes Ronna Ricardo and Vickie Barret. In the course of the Old Bailey trial Ricardo withdrew her allegations of procuring against Ward and Barret's similar allegations were shown to be specious by the defence. Following a harsh attack on his character, in his summing up, by the prosecuting attorney, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Ward took an overdose of sleeping tablets on the night before the last day of the trial. He was in a coma when the jury reached their verdict of guilty of the charge of living on the immoral earnings of Keeler and Rice-Davies on Wednesday 31 July. The charges of procuring were rejected. Three days later, on Saturday 3 August, he died in St Stephen's Hospital. In his book on the trial, Ludovic Kennedy considers the guilty verdict to be a miscarriage of justice and points out that Keeler received more money from Ward than she from him, so that rather than Ward living on her earnings it was she living on his.
Shortly after Ward's death, a pornographer named Freddie Reid mounted an exhibition of Ward's pictures, which was alleged to include compromising pictures of well-known individuals. However, Reid held a private viewing and sold many of the pictures before they were made public. In her 2001 autobiography, Keeler claimed, without supporting evidence, that the MI5 chief Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy and that Ward ran a spy ring which included Hollis and Sir Anthony Blunt.
