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THE BERKLEY HORSE 

In Georgian and Victorian times many men visited specialised spanking brothels with the express purpose of being flogged by women and brought to orgasm. One such lady, Miss Berkely, even invented a special horse for men which came to be known as ‘The Berkley Horse’:

A sketch of the original horse and a photo of a modern-day replica

Theresa Berkley, was the ‘governess’ of one of London’s most famous flagellation brothels, a whorehouse dedicated to the art of flogging men and sometimes women with birches, as well as  other implements. Clients typically consisted of wealthy English gentlemen (and women) who enjoyed a good spanking or flogging.  For a price, one could also spank/flog one of Miss Berkley’s own employees.

Asa’s note…

I researched this a lot when I wrote my story the Inveigle, prior to these times, spanking brothels were for women seeking women. Look under Photo Stories for ‘The Inveigle’….it is rather long, but I think you will like it…all illustrated of course!

The willing victim was tied face-down onto the rack, his face and genitals poking out on the other side through carefully placed holes. It was then levered into a 45-degree angle. One of the harlots would then whip their buttocks with a birch, whilst another harlot could sit underneath and could either finger or suck them off – creating a glorious mix of pleasure and pain! The English were so keen on being flogged for pleasure, it was given the name “the English vice” by the French. 

One writer of the time wrote:

‘Perhaps it was the cold climate which originally aroused in Englishmen a desire for whipping. Nowhere else in the world do we find such a deep affection for the rod. It might have been the fact that the upper classes were thrashed at school that engendered generations of powerful, influential masochists. Flagellation was considered an aristocratic fetish – only wealthy people like to be beaten for fun!’

The C18 print below shows a young gentleman being soundly birched across a harlot’s knee whilst his legs are firmly held by another. Note the experience clearly excites him if you inspect the picture  very carefully!

Another C18 print of the ‘goings-on’ in a flagellation brothel, this time depicting a large-bottomed lady having her bottom soundly birched by two harlots as she seems to be masturbating the man over whom she is bending. Note the spectators peering through the window clearly enjoying the spectacle. Voyeurs would pay for the privilege of being allowed to witness such scenes!

Whilst I clearly digress from the main theme of this post, I couldn’t but help resist delving a little deeper into the World of flagellation brothels. The ‘English Vice’ is well-described below in an extract from ‘Fanny Hill’ by John Cleland, a notorious C18 erotic novel chronicling the life of a prostitute, Fanny Hill. In the extract, Fanny is introduced to a Mr.Barville, who it seems can only get sexual pleasure from being birched by a woman, as well as birching a woman himself. This is Fanny’s first attempt at wielding the rod. Having thrashed Mr.Barville to his satisfaction, she then submits herself to the birch, but doesn’t seem to get quite the same degree of pleasure as he from the experience! 

Fanny amusingly describes his penis prior to starting to birch him:  “It seemed almost shrunk into his body, scarce showing its tip above the sprout of hairy curls that clothed those parts, as you may have seen a wren peeping its head out of the grass.”

Halfway through birching him Fanny decides to check on the state of his penis and gets a shock! “Softly insinuating my hand under his thigh, I felt the posture things were in forwards, which was indeed surprising: for that machine of him, which I had, by its appearance, taken for an impalpable, or at least a very diminutive subject, was now, in virtue of all that smart and havoc of his skin behind, grown not only to a prodigious stiffness of erection, but to a size that frighted even me: a non-pareil (without equal) thickness indeed! the head of it alone filled the utmost capacity of my grasp.

Rebecca Night starred in the 2007 BBC production of Fanny Hill written by Andrew Davies. Unfortunately, although there is reference to Mr Barville’s ‘special tastes’, the birching episode does not (understandably) feature in this TV version! 

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Here is the extract. Typical of the C18, the language is a bit florid and fulsome, but bear with it if you can!

‘After a competent preparation by apologies, and encouragement to go through my part with spirit and constancy, he stood up near the fire, whilst I went to fetch the instruments of discipline out of a closet hard by: these were several rods, made each of two or three strong twigs of birch tied together, which he took, handled, and viewed with as much pleasure, as I did with a kind of shuddering presage. 

Next we took from the side of the room a long broad bench, made easy to lie at length on by a soft cushion in a calico-cover; and everything being now ready, he took his coat and waistcoat off; and at his motion and desire, I unbuttoned his breeches, and rolling up his shirt rather above his waist, tucked it on securely there; when directing naturally my eyes to that humoursone master-movement, in whose favour all these dispositions were making, it seemed almost shrunk into his body, scarce showing its tip above the sprout of hairy curls that clothed those parts, as you may have-seen a wren peeping its head out of the grass. 

Stooping them to untie his garters, he gave them to me for the use of tying him down to the legs of the bench: a circumstance no farther necessary than, as I suppose, it made part of the humour of the thing, since he prescribed it to himself, amongst the rest of the ceremonial. 

I led him then to the bench, and according to my cue, played at forcing him to lie down: which, after-some little show of reluctance, for form-sake, he submitted to; he was straightway extended flat upon his belly, on the bench, with a pillow under his face; and as he thus tamely lay, I tied him slightly hand and feet, to the legs of it; which done, his shirt remaining trussed up over the small of his back, I drew his breeches quite down to his knees; and now he lay, in all the fairest, broadest display of that part of the back-view; in which a pair of chubby, smooth-cheeked and passing white posteriors rose cushioning upwards from two stout, fleshy thighs, and ending their cleft, or separation by an union at the small of the back, presented a bold mark, that swelled, as it were, to meet the scourge. 

Seizing now one of the rods, I stood over him, and according to his direction, gave him in one breath, ten lashes with much good-will, and the utmost nerve and vigour of arm that I could put to them, so as to make those fleshy orbs quiver again under them; whilst he himself seemed no more concerned, or to mind them, than a lobster would a flea-bite. In the meantime, I viewed intently the effect of them, which to me at last appeared surprisingly cruel: every lash had skimmed the surface of those white cliffs, which they deeply reddened, and lapping round the side of the furthermost from me, cut specially, into the dimple of it, such livid weals, as the blood either spun out from, or stood in large drops on; and, from some of the cuts, I picked out even the splinters of the rod that had stuck in the skin. Nor was this raw work to be wondered at, considering the greenness of the twigs and the severity of the infliction, whilst the whole surface of the skin was so smooth-stretched over the hard and firm pulp of flesh that filled it, as to yield no play, or elusive swagging under the stroke: which thereby took place the more plump, and cut into the quick. 

I was however already so moved at the piteous sight, that I from my heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over, thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting, surveyed the increase of bloody appearances. And at length, steeled to the height, by his stoutness in suffering, I continued the discipline, by intervals, till I observed him wreathing and twisting his body, in a way that I could plainly perceive was not the effect of pain, but of some new and powerful sensation: curious to dive into the meaning of which, in one of my pauses of intermission, I approached, as he still kept working, and grinding his belly against the cushion under him: and first stroking the untouched and unhurt side of the flesh-mount next me, then softly insinuating my hand under his thigh, felt the posture things were in forwards, which was indeed surprising: for that machine of him, which I had, by its appearance, taken for an impalpable, or at least a very diminutive subject, was now, in virtue of all that smart and havoc of his skin behind, grown not only to a prodigious stiffness of erection, but to a size that frighted even me: a non-pareil (without equal) thickness indeed! the head of it alone filled the utmost capacity of my grasp. And when, as he heaved and wriggled to and fro, in the agitation of his strange pleasure, it came into view, it had something of the air of a round fillet of veal, and like its owner, squab, and short in proportion to its breadth; but when he felt my hand there, he begged I would go on briskly with my jerking, or he should never arrive at the last stage of pleasure. 

Resuming then the rod and the exercise of it, I had fairly worn out three bundles, when, after an increase of struggles and motion, and a deep sigh or two, I saw him lie still and motionless; and now he desired me to desist, which I instantly did; and proceeding to untie him, I could not but be amazed at his passive fortitude, on viewing the skin of his butchered, mangled posteriors, late so white, smooth and polished, now all one side of them a confused cut-work of weals, livid flesh, gashes and gore, insomuch that when he stood up, he could scarce walk; in short, he was in sweet-briars. 

Then I plainly perceived, on the cushion, the marks of a plenteous effusion, and already had his sluggard member run up to its old nestling-place, and enforced itself again, as if ashamed to shew its head; which nothing, it seems, could raise but stripes inflicted on its opposite neighbours, who were thus constantly obliged to suffer for his caprice.’

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After birching Mr. Barville, Fanny is required to submit her own bottom for him to birch. Here is her description:

‘Consonant to this disposition was my answer, but my courage was still more in my head, than in my heart; and as cowards rush into danger they fear, in order to be the sooner rid of the pain of that sensation, I was entirely pleased with his hastening matters into execution. 

He had then little to do, but to unloose the strings of my petticoats, and lift them, together with my shift, navel-high, where he just tucked them up loosely, and might be slipt up higher at pleasure. Then viewing me round with great seeming delight, he laid me at length on my face upon the bench, and when I expected he would tie me, as I had done him, and held out my hands, not without fear and a little trembling, he told me, “he would by no means terrify me unnecessarily with such a confinement; for that though he meant to put my constancy to a trial, the standing it was to be completely voluntary on my side, and therefore I might be at full liberty to get up whenever I found the pain too much for me.” You cannot imagine how much I thought myself bound, by being thus allowed to remain loose, and how much spirit this confidence in me gave me, so that I was even from my heart careless how much my flesh might suffer in honour of it. 

All my back parts, naked half way up, were now fully at his mercy: and first, he stood at a convenient distance, delighting himself with a gloating survey of the attitude I lay in, and of all the secret stores I thus exposed to him in fair display. Then, springing eagerly towards me, he covered all those naked parts with a fond profusion of kisses; and now, taking hold of the rod, rather wantoned with me, in gentle inflictions on those tender trembling masses of my flesh behind, than in any way hurt them, till by degrees, he began to tingle them with smarter lashes, so as to provoke a red colour into them, which I knew, as well by the flagrant glow I felt there, as by his telling me, they now emulated the native roses of my other cheeks. When he had thus amused himself with admiring, and toying with them, he went on to strike harder, and more hard, so that I needed all my patience not to cry out, or complain at least. 

At last, he twigged me so smartly as to fetch blood in more than one lash: at sight of which he flung down the rod, flew to me, kissed away the starting drops, and sucking the wounds eased a good deal of my pain. But now raising me on my knees, and making me kneel with them straddling wide, that tender part of me, naturally the province of pleasure, not of pain, came in for its share of suffering: for now, eyeing it wistfully, he directed the rod so that the sharp ends of the twigs lighted there, so sensibly, that I could not help wincing, and writhing my limbs with smart; so that my contortions of body must necessarily throw it into infinite variety of postures and points of view, fit to feast the luxury of the eye. But still I bore everything without crying out: when presently giving me another pause, he rushed, as it were, on that part whose lips, and round about, had felt this cruelty, and by way of reparation, glued his own to them; then he opened, shut, squeezed them, plucked softly the overgrowing moss, and all this in a style of wild passionate rapture and enthusiasm, that expressed excess of pleasure; till betaking himself to the rod again, encouraged by my passiveness, and infuriated with this strange taste of delight, he made my poor posteriors pay for the ungovernableness of it; for now showing them no quarter, the traitor cut me so, that I wanted but little of fainting away, when he gave over. And yet I did not utter one groan, or angry expostulation; but in my heart I resolved nothing so seriously, as never to expose myself again to the like severities. 

You may guess then in what a curious pickle those soft flesh-cushions of mine were, all so red, raw, and in fine, terribly clawed off; but so far from feeling any pleasure in it, that the recent smart made me pout a little, and not with the greatest air of satisfaction receive the compliments, and after-caresses of the author of my pain.’

More to come…