333 images (or so)

theresa berkeley ↘↖

Barring some clarifications in the translation of the Kama Sutra, the Berkely Horse (or Chevalet) is probably the first BDSM toy.  I mean, it’s the first device that we know was designed specifically for causing erotic pain or bondage or submission.  Those birch bundles lying around the base were obviously meant for playing with, too, but birching didn’t originate as a sexual practice.  Yes? Theresa Berekely (or someone in her brothel) invented this modified step-ladder around 1828.  The man in question would be bound face-down to the padded side, and one woman would (optionally) masturbate him while another beat him.  

Barring some clarifications in the translation of the Kama Sutra, the Berkely Horse (or Chevalet) is probably the first BDSM toy.  I mean, it’s the first device that we know was designed specifically for causing erotic pain or bondage or submission.  Those birch bundles lying around the base were obviously meant for playing with, too, but birching didn’t originate as a sexual practice.  Yes?

Theresa Berekely (or someone in her brothel) invented this modified step-ladder around 1828.  The man in question would be bound face-down to the padded side, and one woman would (optionally) masturbate him while another beat him.  

25 June 2010 • theresa berkeley toys early 1800s pen and ink whipping stick bundle furniture

Beyond Circe, there are only a few other quasi-dominatrix figures in pre-modern literature: Quartilla from the Satyricon, or (maybe) Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.  By the late 1700s, pro-dommes (and pro-subs) were a fairly common feature of the sexual landscape, but we don’t really know what they looked like.  There are no pictures of Theresa Berkeley, for example, probably the most famous pro-domme in history. The 1871 image above is of a “pretty horse breaker,” an English euphemism for the high-class prostitutes that rode into Hyde Park to find clients (obeying the letter of a street-walking ordinance that banned unaccompanied women from entering the park on foot.)   She’s probably not a pro-domme, but it’s easy to imagine that the look was much the same.  And girls riding horses and wielding buggy whips are certainly in the neighborhood of the dominatrix fetish.

Beyond Circe, there are only a few other quasi-dominatrix figures in pre-modern literature: Quartilla from the Satyricon, or (maybe) Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.  By the late 1700s, pro-dommes (and pro-subs) were a fairly common feature of the sexual landscape, but we don’t really know what they looked like.  There are no pictures of Theresa Berkeley, for example, probably the most famous pro-domme in history.

The 1871 image above is of a “pretty horse breaker,” an English euphemism for the high-class prostitutes that rode into Hyde Park to find clients (obeying the letter of a street-walking ordinance that banned unaccompanied women from entering the park on foot.) 

 She’s probably not a pro-domme, but it’s easy to imagine that the look was much the same.  And girls riding horses and wielding buggy whips are certainly in the neighborhood of the dominatrix fetish.

8 June 2010 • crinolines equine fetish late 1800s pen and ink prostitute soft media whip theresa berkeley