Who Was the World’s First Dominatrix? Pt1

Who Was the World’s First Dominatrix? Pt1

So who was the world’s first Prodom – Professional Dominatrix? Let’s define that here as a woman who had perfected her art, had her own chamber with specialist equipment and a generous clientele. Well the word ‘dominatrix’ was not used in its modern sense until the 1960s, where it was 1st coined in erotic pulp fiction and B-movies which brought about its more mainstream use. However, if we put that aside the first documented, established domme, then called a ‘female flagellant’ was the infamous Theresa Berkley… but before we meet her, let’s first set the scene for how the role of today’s dominatrix came into being.

The Flagellation Brothels of Victorian London

The Victorian era (1830 – 1901) was one of strict and rigid morals, refined sensibilities and repressed sexuality. It was also a period obsessed with erotic corporal punishment evident from the flagellant pornography, erotic literature and  documented accounts from the period. So it’s no surprise that a flourishing network of prostitutes offering flagellation to their clients existed, (prostitution was, interestingly, legal). According to Prof. Van Yelyr in The Whip & The Rod (1941), it seems that female flagellants “supported 20 splendid establishments’ in London and was known as ‘the English vice’ ”.

The English Vice – The ‘English’ Mansion
The ‘English’ in The English Mansion, the name of this website, is actually a wordplay on this notorious expression and not, in fact, declaring that all our dommes are English, we welcome and showcase dominatrices from all round the world 🙂

Le Vice Anglais

Having surveyed the number of whipping whorehouses in London, the Berlin psychiatrist Iwan Bloch (under the pseudonym Dr. Eugen Dühren) in 1909 concluded that, “England today is the classic land of sexual flagellation”. (His studies on sexuality went on to influence Sigmund Freud.)

This interest in algolagnia (deriving sexual pleasure and stimulation from physical pain) appears to be the result, in part at least, of experiences of flogging at public school. Ronald Pearsall in Night’s Black Angels – The Forms and Faces of Victorian Cruelty (1975) 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.”

The highly respected 19th century British poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 -1909) was well-known to be totally obsessed by corporal punishment. This was a result of his experience at Eton College, a public school (public schools were actually independent private institutions) and a number of his poems make reference to flagellation including this verse,

S W I S H I N G
swishing sounds just so
the birch’s kissing
blessing bottoms
so they glow
brightly blushing
even bleeding
from the mighty bushy blows

It is known that in the late 1860s Swinburne 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. So the stage seemed set in Victorian London for the begins of the fledgling world of the Prodom.

Royal Rods & Regency Governesses

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. 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…”

So given the King, allegedly was visiting a female flagellant we can see how widespread and acceptable, well in a typically English hypocritically, secretively way, it  had become to visit a female flagellant – who were also called ‘Governesses’.

Continued in Pt2