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 [...] desire or [...]) 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." 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 [...] life."

References

• 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 [...] 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