Christine Keeler photos, Thunderbirds-style puppets and Dick Whittington's mummified cat under the hammer in Sworders' Out of the Ordinary sale in Stansted
An assortment of extraordinary lots – including photos from the Profumo Affair scandal, Thunderbirds puppets and Dick Whittington's mummified cat – form part of Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers' latest sale.
The items are among many unusual pieces collated for the Stansted auction house's two-day Out of the Ordinary sale on Tuesday and Wednesday (Feb 15-16).
They include a series of photos of model Christine Keeler taken by Ray Bellisario on the day she was released from Holloway prison in June 1964, having served half of a nine-month sentence for perjury over her notorious affair with politician John Profumo, along with glamour shots of the love interest.
'Freedom - Laughing' and 'Freedom - Mini car' are expected to fetch £400-£600 each while ‘Freedom - First Day Out Of Prison, Lying In A Field' has a guide price of £800-£1,200.
A group of three glamour photos by an unknown photographer, including one of the model topless, is expected to bring £400-600.
In 1963 it emerged that John Profumo, the then Secretary of State for War, had lied to the House of Commons regarding an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model Christine. The nation’s faith in the ruling classes was shaken to its core. The credibility of Harold Macmillan's Government was severely damaged and the fallout contributed to the Conservatives' General Election defeat the following year.
Public interest in the affair was heightened because of Keeler's suspected involvement with a Russian naval attaché, which posed a potential national security risk.
Almost 60 years later and interest in Keeler and her showgirl friend Mandy Rice-Davies, who mixed in powerful social circles at the time, remains high. A rare nude studio photo of Rice Davies, taken by an unknown photographer in the early 1960s, is expected to fetch £500-£700.
A mummified medieval cat, thought to have belonged to the real Richard 'Dick' Whittington, three-times mayor of London and lord of the manor of Thorley who lived from 1353 to 1423, was discovered during an unsuccessful attempt to find his tomb in 1949. Mounted in a wooden case along with a mummified rat, the macabre relic is estimated at £2,000-£3,000.
Naturally mummified cats were a common feature of medieval buildings and were incorporated into the foundations to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck to the inhabitants. Sworders' listing states: "This example, that may indeed be from Whittington's time, was on display at the Whittington and Cat public house on Highgate Hill, London – and featured in the television programme Living Legends, with the great Magnus Magnusson, in 1979 – before it was given to the vendor by the landlord."
A Second World War chromo-lithograph propaganda poster published in occupied Paris by the Vichy government in 1942 and signed with the monogram of the artist ‘SPK’ depicts Winston Churchill as an octopus with its tentacles representing British military intervention in the Middle East and Africa.
The text reads 'Confiance... ses amputations se poursuivent methodiquement' – or 'Have faith – the systematic amputations are continuing'.
The desire was to spotlight the areas of conflict that existed between Vichy French forces and the British and Free French. This well known, but rare image is guided at £4,000-£5,000.
Two Thunderbirds puppets from the private collection of Terry Curtis, one of the original sculptors working for producer Gerry Anderson in the 1960s – Captain Grey, a character from Captain Scarlet, and The Atlantian, the lead ‘actor’ in an abandoned Anderson show – are estimated at £4,000-£5,000 and £8,000-£10,000 respectively.
Bones from the most famous of all extinct birds also come up for sale. The connecting pair of tarsus (ankle bone) and phalanx (toe bone) from the dodo, the flightless species that died out in Mauritius around 330 years ago, are expected to bring £3,000-£4,000.
The 7.5cm ankle bone and 4cm toe bone are from a group of dodo bones discovered in 1885 during the investigation of the Mare aux Songes swamp in Mauritius by schoolmaster George Clarke. Hearing that a few old dodo bones had been found in this area, he hired local servants to wade through the mud and feel for further finds with their feet.
