Vic­to­rian Broth­els, flog­ging & birching

Often we try to com­pare Vic­to­rian era brothel behav­ior with mod­ern bdsm. I think we have to admit that it rep­re­sents a part of our past but must rec­og­nize it’s dirty and ugly side as well. One can truly say, from the descrip­tion below, that the behav­ior in the broth­els didn’t fit into today’s con­cept of safe, sane, and the activ­i­ties were  NOT consensual.

Whip­ping

How­ever it is a part of our Past.

Mary Jef­fries ran the most exclu­sive brothel in the “Vic­to­rian Era.” Her chief assis­tant was a Mrs. Tra­vers. She kid­napped chil­dren by offer­ing to watch them while the par­ents went to gather lug­gage or buy tick­ets. Jef­fries catered to nobil­ity. “There was no form of sex­ual vice for which this mur­der­ess did not cater” (Ter­rot, 1960, p.91). Stead (Tenot, 1960, p.54), writ­ing for the Pall Mall Gazette, described one of her houses,

“Flog­ging or birch­ing goes on in broth­els to a much greater degree than is gen­er­ally believed. One of Mrs. Jef­fr­les’ rooms was fit­ted up like a tor­ture cham­ber… There were rings in the ceil­ing for hang­ing women and chil­dren up by the wrists, lad­ders for strap­ping them down at any angle, as well as the ordi­nary stretcher to which the vic­tim is fas­tened so as to be unable to move. The instru­ments of fla­gel­la­tion included the ordi­nary birch, whips, holly branches and wire-thonged cat-o’-nine-tails.”

Ter­rot, C. (1960), Traf­fic in Inno­cents: The Shock­ing story of white slav­ery in Eng­land, New York E. P. Dut­ton & Co,. Inc

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