Mrs Lechworthy

Mrs Lechworthy (or Mrs Letchworth) is a fictional dominatrix appearing as a stock character in a number of works of Victorian erotica, many by James Campbell Reddie for the publisher William Dugdale, including The Mysteries of Verbena House: the name was also used in stories in William Lazenby's magazine The Oyster.

She is usually portrayed as running a "private establishment" in St John's Wood, where she subjects men and women to beatings. Like her counterpart Rosa Coote, the character is probably based on the real-life Theresa Berkley who ran such an establishment in Soho. Like her, Mrs Lechworthy (the variants of the name deriving from Victorian slang "lech" for sexual desire or fetish) is usually depicted as making use of a Berkley horse-type flogging framework while wearing a corset and little else.

De Riot observes that a similarly named character (Mme Letchworth) is also found in French erotica, such was the perceived expertise of the English with le vice Anglais — England had long been represented as the natural home of flagellation. Thus, "Perhaps it was the cold climate which originally aroused in Englishmen a desire for whipping. Nowhere in the world do we find such a deep affection for the rod."^[1] And again — "Flagellation-mania (the desire to beat and flog) and preference for the use of the rod may be described as a specifically English abuse; it was so widespread among all ranks and ages that it formed one of the most interesting features of their sexual life." ^[2]

References

1. ^ B.J. Hurwood, "The Golden Age of Erotica"
2. ^ Iwan Bloch, "Sexual Life in England" [1]

• Henry Spencer Ashbee (as Pisanus Fraxi), "Catena librorum tacendorum", 1885
• Marc Silver and Giovanna Buonanno, "Cross-cultural encounters: identity, gender, representation", Officina, 2005
• Steven Marcus, "The other Victorians: a study of sexuality and pornography in mid-nineteenth-Century England", Transaction Publishers, 2008, ISBN 1412808197
• Peggy J. Kleinplatz, Charles Allen Moser, "Sadomasochism: powerful pleasures", Haworth Press, 2006, ISBN 156023640X
• A. de Riot, "Le Marquis de Sade et Son Temps", Editions Slatkine, 1901