The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly
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Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking
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The Flagellation Brothels of Old London  In the late Victorian era Great Britain was obsessed with corporal punishment and awash with flagellant pornography so it is no surprise to also find the widespread contemporary practice of whipping in brothels.Records show that a flourishing network of prostitutes offering flagellation to their clients existed from at least the end of the 18th century. According to Van Yelyr in The Whip & The Rod, it seems that in 1838 flogging 'supported 20 splendid establishments' in London and was known as 'the English vice'. Having surveyed the number of whipping whorehouses in London the Berlin psychiatrist Iwan Bloch (who wrote under the pseudonym 'Dr. Eugen Dühren' to avoid controversy) concluded that: "England today is the classic land of sexual flagellation". This interest in flagellomania appears to be the result, in part at least, of experiences of flogging at public school. Donald Persall in Night's Black Angels – The Forms and Faces of Victorian Cruelty writes: "The outcome of the public school predilection for flogging, was that in later life ... there were considerable numbers of young men anxious and often desperate to recapture the lost sensations, and for them the flagellation brothels thrived." Swinburne The highly respected nineteenth-century British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne was well known to be totally obsessed by flagellation (or his 'swishings' as he referred to them) as a result of his experience at Eton. A number of his poems make reference to flagellation including this verse which he wrote in 1879 in The Pearl: A fine flogging to see, I give leave to stay here With Frank Fane and me. They will see his white bottom, When they see it again, I don't think they'd fancy It belongs to Frank Fane. It is known that in the late 1860s he was a regular visitor to a flagellant brothel, believed to be Verbena Lodge at 7 Circus Road in St John's Wood and whose proprietress was Mrs Doris Addams. In 1919, some years after Swinburne's death, Edmund Gosse, wrote that the brothel was staffed by 'two golden-haired and rouge-cheeked ladies'. Renowned Female Flagellants  In his book, Index of Forbidden Books which was penned in the 1880s, Henry Spencer Ashbee describes how at the beginning of the 19th century:"...very sumptuously fitted-up establishments, exclusively devoted to the administration of the birch, were not uncommon 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."Ashbee also makes a brief reference to a few of the female flagellants who ran these establishments. Of particular interest is a Mrs Colet, a 'noted whipper', originally residing at Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, who was visited by no less a figure than King George IV. We also learn that she subsequently brought up her own niece, later known as Mrs Mitchell, to carry on in the same line and that she too ran a successful business in various London localities. We are also told of a Mrs James who had previously been a maid in the family of Lord Clanricarde. She had a house at No 7 Carlisle Street, Soho and later retired from the business having made a good fortune, to live in luxury at Notting Hill. Theresa Berkley Without doubt the most famous female flagellant, however, was Theresa Berkley who was born circa 1750. She ran a high-class flagellation brothel, the "White House", at 28 Charlotte Street (now Hallam Street) just to the east of Portland Place, Marylebone, London from around 1787 until 1836. She was described as an expert with all implements of torture and her talents became highly sought after by the aristocracy of the day. Little is known regarding Mrs. Berkley's early history but contemporary accounts have described her early 19th century brothel with great detail. Ashbee writes: "At her shop, whosoever 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, phlebotomized, and tortured until he had a belly full."and further... "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."  Unlike so many other brothel keepers of her time, Mrs Berkley had little fear of being imprisoned or transported due primarily to the nature of her clientele. In the Spring of 1828 she began using a custom-built flagellation frame, designed either by, or for her, which she referred to as a chevalet although it subsequently became known as a Berkley Horse. We are told that Mrs Berkley had a print of the contraption within her memoirs that showed a naked man who had been secured to it and that according to Ashbee:"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."After her death in 1836, her memoirs, which had long been announced for publication, were held back by the executor of her will, Dr. Vance, who had been her medical attendant. They were never to be published but there were rumoured to be numerous boxes with correspondence reported to contain very compromising letters and we have to assume they were destroyed by Vance. She willed her entire fortune to a monastery in Australia run by her brother who returned to England to settle her estate. However, he was apparently horrified once he learned how she had amassed her fortune and returned to Australia having renounced any claim to the estate. Flagellation Today Of course, the practice of flagellation is just as much in operation today, although the practitioners generally enjoy less celebrity. As an observer remarked following the abolition of corporal punishment in Britain in 1986, in future, those who wanted to be beaten would have to take themselves off to an independent school or help themselves to a card in a central London telephone box!  Now and again, however, a high profile figure will hit the headlines, the most recent at the time of writing being the Formula 1 motor racing chief Max Mosley. Sleazy tabloid Sunday Newspaper, The News of the World, took great delight in splattering the story all over its front page. Mosley, however, took them to court and won the case. In court, Mosley revealed that his wife of 48 years had had no idea about his fetish and that he had frequently paid up to £2,500 a time to have prostitutes beat, whip and humiliate him.The News of the World was totally unrepentant after the ruling, issuing a statement about Mosley "...taking part in depraved and brutal S&M orgies". Fortunately, this pitiful excuse for a newspaper is no longer with us. Good riddance I say! 26 comments
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