Erotic fla­gel­la­tion is one of the ear­li­est activ­i­ties now recog­nised as SM to emerge with a well–

whip­ping

doc­u­mented erotic lit­er­a­ture. Vic­to­rian pornog­ra­phy was full of it, and there are clear records that in the big­ger cities at least there was a flour­ish­ing net­work of pros­ti­tutes cater­ing to the inter­est from at least the end of the 18th cen­tury. The fol­low­ing is extracted from the ‘Fla­gel­la­tion’ entry in Ashbee’s Index of For­bid­den Books (Ash­bee 1969:147–151), writ­ten in late Vic­to­rian times. Unfor­tu­ately Ash­bee does not acknowl­edge the source of the quoted account of Mrs Berkley.

Henry Spencer Ash­bee aka Pisanus Fraxi 1969, Index of For­bid­den Books (writ­ten 1880s), Lon­don: Sphere

The author of the Vic­to­rian porn clas­sic Walter’s My Secret Life pro­vides a detailed guide to his exten­sive col­lec­tion of dirty books, with extracts, pro­vid­ing amongst other things evi­dence of the wide­spread exis­tence of SM activ­i­ties prior to the ‘inven­tion’ of SM.

At the early part of this cen­tury [the 19th], very sump­tu­ously fitted-up estab­lish­ments, exclu­sively devoted to the admin­is­tra­tion of the birch, were not unco­moon in Lon­don; and women of the town served, as it were, an appren­tice­ship in order to acquire the art of grace­fully and effec­tively admin­is­ter­ing the rod. It would be easy to form a very lengthy list of these female fla­gel­lants, but I shall restrict myself to men­tion a few only. Mrs Col­lett was a noted whip­per, and George IV is known to have vis­ited her; she had an estab­lish­ment in Tavi­s­tock Court, Covent Gar­den, whence she removed to the neigh­bour­hood of Port­land Place, and after­wards to Bed­ford Street, Rus­sell Square, where she died. She brought up her niece in the same line, who, as Mrs Mitchell, car­ried on a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in var­i­ous places, among oth­ers at No 22 (after­wards 44) Water­loo Road, and finally at St Mary’s Square, Ken­ning­ton, where she died. Then came Mrs James, who had been maid in the fam­ily of Lord Clan­ri­carde; she had a house at No 7 Carlisle Street, Soho; she retired from busi­ness with a good for­tune, and dwelt at Not­ting Hill in lux­ury, her house being dec­o­rated with pic­tures, and her per­son cov­ered with jewels.

There were, fur­ther: Mrs Emma Lee, real name Richard­son, of No 50 Mar­garet Street, Regent Street; Mrs Phillips, of No 11 Upper Bel­grave Place, Pim­lico; Mrs Shep­herd, of No 25 Gilbert Street; Mrs Sarah Pot­ter, alias Stew­art, of var­i­ous addresses, who died in 1873; and, were it not indis­creet, I might add the names of one or two other ladies who still carry on their call­ing. But the queen of her pro­fes­sion was undoubt­edly Mrs Theresa Berkley, of No 28 Char­lotte Street, Port­land Place; she was a per­fect mis­tress of her art, under­stood how to sat­isfy her clients, and was, more­over, a thor­ough woman of busi­ness, for she amassed dur­ing her career a con­sid­er­able sum of money…

“Her instru­ments of tor­ture were more numer­ous than those of any other gov­erness. Her sup­ply of birch was exten­sive, and kept in water, so that it was always green and pli­ant: she had shafts with a dozen whip thongs on each of them; a dozen dif­fer­ent sizes of cat-o’-nine-tails, some with nee­dle points worked into them; var­i­ous kinds of thin bend­ing canes; leather straps like coach traces; bat­tle­doors, made of thick sole-leather, with inch nails run through to docket, and cur­rycomb tough hides ren­dered cal­lous by many years fla­gel­la­tion. Holly brushes, furze brushes; a prickly ever­green, called butcher’s bush; and dur­ing the sum­mer, a glass and China vases, filled with a con­stant sup­ply of green net­tles, with which she often restored the dead to life. Thus, at her shop, who­ever went with plenty of money, could be birched, whipped, fusti­gated, scourged, needle-pricked, half-hung, holly-brushed, furze-brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlet­botomized, and tor­tured till he had a belly full.

“For those whose lech it was to flog a woman, she would her­self sub­mit to a cer­tain extent; but if they were glut­tons at it, she had women in atten­dance who would take any num­ber of lashes the flog­ger pleased, pro­vided he forked out an ad val­orem duty. Among these were Miss Ring, Han­nah Jones, Sally Tay­lor, One-eyed Peg, Bauld-cunted Poll, and a black girl, called Ebony Bet.

“A noto­ri­ous machine was invented for Mrs Berkley to flog gen­tle­men upon, in the spring of 1828. It is capa­ble of being opened to a con­sid­er­able extent, so as to bring the body to any angle that might be desir­able. There is a print in Mrs Berkley’s mem­oirs, rep­re­sent­ing a man upon it quite naked. A woman is sit­ting in a chair exactly under it, with her bosom, belly, and bush exposed: she is man­u­al­iz­ing his embolon, whilst Mrs Berkley is birch­ing his pos­te­ri­ors. The female act­ing as fric­trix, was intended for Fisher, a fine, tall, dark-haired girl, all must remem­ber who vis­ited Char­lotte Street at that day, as well as the good humoured blonde, Willis; the plump, tight, frisky and merry arsed Thru­low; Grenville, with the enor­mous bub­bies; Ben­tine, with breadth of hip and splen­dour of but­tock; Olive, the gipsy, whose brown skin, wicked black eye, and Medicean form, would melt an anchorite; the mild and ami­able Palmer, with lux­u­ri­ant and well-fledged mount, from whose tufted hon­ors many a noble lord had stolen a sprig; and Pryce, the pleas­ing and com­plaisant, who, if birch was a ques­tion, could both give and take.

“When the new flog­ging machine was invented, the designer told her it would bring her into notice, and go by her name after her death; and it did cause her to be talked of, and brought her a great deal of busi­ness. She died in Sep­tem­ber, 1836, hav­ing funded ten thou­sand pounds dur­ing the eight years she had been a gov­erness. The orig­i­nal horse is among the mod­els of the Soci­ety of Arts at the Adel­phi, and was pre­sented by Doc­tor Vance, her executor.

“Mrs Berkley has also in her sec­ond floor, a hook and pul­ley attached to the ceil­ing, by which she could draw a man up by his hands. This oper­a­tion is also rep­re­sented in her memoirs.” […]

Shortly after her death, her brother, who had been a mis­sion­ary for 30 years in Aus­tralia, arrived in Eng­land, but when he learned the source from which the prop­erty she had left him had been derived, he renounced all claim, and imme­di­ately went back to Aus­tralia. In default, the prop­erty was bequeathed to Dr Vance, her med­ical atten­dant and execu­tor; but he refused to admin­is­ter, and the whole was escheated to the crown. Dr Vance came into pos­ses­sion of her cor­re­spon­dence, sev­eral boxes full, which, I am assured by one who exam­ined it, was of the most extra­or­di­nary char­ac­ter, con­tain­ing let­ters from the high­est per­son­ages, male and female, in the land. The whole was even­tu­ally destroyed.

Many of these women, there can be lit­tle doubt, took an inter­est, if not a plea­sure, in their voca­tion. The fol­low­ing is extracted from the cor­re­spon­dence of a gen­tle­man still liv­ing, a pas­sion­ate devo­tee of the birch, and one who is wor­thy of all con­fi­dences in mat­ters con­nected to flagellation:

“In my expe­ri­ence I have known per­son­ally sev­eral ladies of high rank who had an extra­or­di­nary pas­sion for admin­is­ter­ing the rod, and that too wtih mer­ci­less sever­ity . I knew too the wife of a cler­gy­man, young and pretty, who car­ried the taste to excess. I have known one only who liked receiv­ing it, and she was quite of the low­est order; when excited by drink, she would allow her­self to be birched until her bot­tom was utterly raw, and the rod sat­u­rated with blood, she cry­ing out dur­ing the oper­a­tion ‘harder! harder!’ and blas­phem­ing if it was not well laid on. At the estab­lish­ment I have named (exist­ing at present in Lon­don, but of which I sup­press the name) there come twenty young girls who go through all the phases of schoolmistress, and whip fear­fully severely. The pro­grammes sent by the pupils are extra­or­di­nary — some like to be whipped as chil­dren on the knee, some on the back of a ser­vant, oth­ers to be strapped down.”

It is a well-known fact that women are, and always have been, even more fond of wield­ing the rod than men, and this pas­sion per­vades the higher, rather than the lower classes.