Aubrey Beardsley, the great Art Nouveau artist whose work embodied Decadence & Desire, and Victorian Morality Mocking, who sadly died at age 25. (Illustrations here Circa 1890). We have no images of Theresa Berkley.
Who Was the World’s First Dominatrix? Pt2
Theresa Berkley –The First Lady Of ProDomination
The most famous of these female flagellants (and one of the earliest, she pre-dates the Victorian period) was Theresa Berkley, born circa 1750. She ran a high-class flagellation brothel, the ‘White House’ at 28 Charlotte Street (now Hallam Street) 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.
All the following quotes are further extracts from the ‘Flagellation’ entry in Ashbee’s Index of Forbidden Books, which I think place Miss Berkley as most certainly, the First Lady of professional domination.
“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, phlebotomized, and tortured till he had a belly full.”
“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.”
The Berkley Horse
In 1828 she began using a custom-built flagellation frame which she referred to as a ‘chevalet’ although it subsequently became known as The Berkley Horse.
“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, [wanking his hard cock] whilst Mrs Berkley is birching his posteriors.”
“A woman is sitting in a chair exactly under it, with her bosom, belly, and bush exposed, she is manualizing his embolon,”
In one surviving letter, a customer hearing about the Berkley Horse proffered Theresa Berkley this pricing for her services, “a pound sterling for the first blood drawn, two pounds sterling if the blood runs down to my heels, three pounds sterling if my heels are bathed in blood, four pounds sterling if the blood reaches the floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness.”
Suppressed Memoirs & A Renounced Fortune
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. And, sadly like so much erotica and sexual material from the period was destroyed. It was rumoured to contain compromising letters from certain members of the establishment, “from the highest aristocracy, both male and female, in the land.” Their contents were so outrageous that it was claimed they could have “threatened the very fabric of society.”
The Society of Arts at the Adelphi (now the Royal Society of Arts) took possession of the Horse in 1837, with a public exhibition promoted by radical publisher George Cannon. An illustration of the apparatus is reproduced in the original 1880s edition of Index of Forbidden Books, however, it is unclear what happened to the device.
