The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly


Wellred Weekly
Volume 1, Number 3 : December 10, 2011
 
Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking

The Flagellation Brothels of Old London
by Februs

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:

Any boy that enjoys
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:
TheEnglishMaster said...
Here here! And so say all of us.
Thanks - this is fascinating and informative. What a shame about the loss of Mrs Berkley's memoirs, not to mention the boxes of correspondence!
9 December 2011 22:22
sugarmouse said...
Very interesting and how amazingly shortsighted of her brother ... he could have run her establishment and done a roaring trade with monk-ey business!
10 December 2011 00:52
Seegee said...
Talk of le vice anglais starting in school always reminds me of the brilliant Rowan Atkinson sketch Fatal Beatings.
10 December 2011 03:14
islandcarol said...
I suspect you thoroughly enjoyed researching this article, Februs. Perhaps you may be inspired to pen a poem on this topic.
I recall King George IV liked to be beaten before sex; I had no idea that flagellation was a national past time.
My education is deficit. I have never read the tales of Theresa Berkley. What a woman! And since she was devout enough to leave her fortune to a Monastery, she must reside in heaven.
10 December 2011 20:28
opb said...
An excellent article Februs. I knew that such places must have existed for they feature in the flagennant erotica of the day, but just how popular they were ( and still would be if some of the fiction we see here is anything to go by) was quite a surprise.
11 December 2011 14:36
blimp said...
Interesting article. Our great Public Schools have a lot to answer for. The demise of the News of the Screws gives all thinking people in this land great joy I should think! If only The Sun, Mirror and Star would go the same way!
11 December 2011 22:17
canadianspankee said...
I had always known there were such houses but did not know the depth it went to until I read this article.

There are professional doms to this day that still make a living doing exactly the same thing to both men and women so I suppiose it should not be a great shock to anyone that such things existed before. I guess the main difference being is that the Doms today are less public and the people who visit are more discreet.

Thanks for the histroy lesson, one is always amazed what they find on this site. As a Canadian I know nothing of the newspapers but we have our trashy ones as well and it seems as soon as one leaves another takes its place.
12 December 2011 05:10
mati said...
Funny enough the flagellation brothels are the first thing I learned about London, long before I even knew where England is located. My parents owned an encyclopaedia consisting of 8 volumes about culture and morals, but only the volume about eros, sex and morals was ever read in our household. It contained a description of this brothels. Very fascinating.

I don't like the Sunday papers either, but if they are good for anything, it's probably the fact that writing about "scandals" like the one about Max Mosley shows kinky people always, that they are not alone in the world and maybe in the long term it brings forward more tolerance.
13 December 2011 14:19
catharsis said...
Now, if only we could start a trend among the numerous massage therapists that bare-bottom spanking (with or without implements) is a normal part of an intense massage! That would "commoditize" the spanking that is now in the closet. Probably would double the business of therapists who chose add this particular technique to their Reiki, Shiatzu, etc.
2 January 2012 19:51
Guy said...
Interesting! To me, the word "brothel" was always synonymous with "whorehouse", though it may imply a higher class establishment and clientele. So is it rude to wonder if prostitutes were also available in these establishments?

Excellent article. Thanks!
1 June 2012 16:27
oldtom said...
A fascinating account and how much I agree with your comment about the News of the World. In fact the NOW was being extremely hypocritical because it was mother's Sunday newspaper of choice! When she fell asleep on Sunday afternoon as she always did I would read the paper and it often had stories of spankings and beatings described in great detail and with relish and not a note of criticism anywhere. Most unsuitable reading for a boy of about 8 to 10 years of age.
1 June 2012 20:40
singlemalt8 said...
A wonderful short history, thank you for the effort.
2 June 2012 02:58
jamieanne63 said...
I very much enjoyed this article! Its nice to know the tradition of men baring and presenting their backsides to women for correction has such a storied and interesting history! May it continue forever!
24 December 2012 11:46
Eiffel said...
Ashbee was an interesting character, a serious collector of erotica and fine literature. He left his collection to the British Library, who kept the fine literature, but tragically destroyed much of the "erotica and curiosa" ("curiosa" is a term of art in the book trade for pornographic material).

Ashbee also wrote erotica, under the pen name "Pisanus Fraxi", and he is now thought most likely to be the author of the celebrated "My Secret Life". Probably the first modern writer to take "our thing" seriously.
9 January 2013 14:32
Gustavv said...
Was there any brothels where the girls working there could be flogged to, i wonder?
3 May 2015 04:04
TomHobbes said...
Why did it take me years to find this one? Well done and nicely explains why the nineteenth-century English are the fountainhead of all we revel in today. Thank you to all our forebears for beating and the path wide and clear for us.
12 May 2015 18:36
piscatorialarts said...
Now that is a history lesson to remember!
25 November 2015 09:58
curioserto said...
Thank you for a well researched and structured article. I look forward to a world one day when spanking celebrities is not considered newsworthy although the first I ever knew of Max Mosley was when I read the newspaper article. I grew up with my parents buying the News of the World and Sunday People. That is the only formal sex education I ever received so that is maybe why I have some of my tastes!
29 November 2015 08:58
tfs said...
A fine exposition of some of the notable establishments of bygone days.
27 September 2020 02:06
Often123 said...
A good bit of history here. I had heard of those establishments and don't doubt they provide a bit of inspiration for some of today's clubs.
catharsis raised the idea of letting massage therapists provide some of these services too. Not a bad idea at all.
8 October 2020 20:39
fesseefan said...
A wonderful history lesson. According to his biographer, Winston Churchill was caned/whipped at his prep school and public school. If its good enough for Winston......!
22 October 2020 11:26
GuyFromRI said...
A Wonderful article! A decade ago, while visiting London, I visited a dominant who was also a prostitute. I found notice of her in an online “Punter’s Review.” I contracted for a good going over with implements of wood and leather. Near the end of our session she offered to finish me by mouth or hand but I requested instead she fill the last 10 minutes with as severe a paddling as she could muster. She did not disappoint. Such fond memories of cheery old England!
1 November 2020 12:27
glencoe said...
Who would have believed those staid victorians
15 January 2021 23:49
jsanon said...
I know of no whorehouses in the San Francisco area, but if good spanking without sex is desired, one can investigate, with a google search, two places an hour away that provide them. . One is in Berkeley! (Not named for the Berkeley horse lady). And there are other excellent choices.
2 February 2021 22:14
michaeljw said...
Fascinating essay and very enlightening, very enjoyable to read.
1 September 2021 12:03
toptobottom said...
The information in this treatise put flesh on the suspicion that most given to punishment today are but the current practitioners of an almost universal desire to have pain enter their lives. A wonderful research summary.
22 September 2021 06:05

You need to sign in if you wish to make a comment
    


  Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14