The Berkley Horse is a BDSM device designed for and by Theresa Berkley in 1828. She referred to it as a “Chevalet.” According to Henry Spencer Ashbee's report:
In the spring of 1828, an infamous machine was invented for Mrs. Berkley to whip gentlemen. It can be opened to a considerable degree, allowing the body to be placed at any desired angle. In Mrs. Berkley's memoirs there is a print of a man completely naked. A woman sits on a chair directly below, with her breasts, stomach and bush exposed: she works on his embolus with her hand while Mrs. Berkley holds his buttocks. When the new flogging machine was invented, the designer told her that it would make her famous and bear her name after her death; and she actually became well known and brought her big business. The original horse is among the Society of Arts models at the Adelphi and was gifted by Doctor Vance, her executor.
In one surviving letter, a customer who heard about the Berkley horse offered Theresa Berkley this price for her services: "One pound sterling for the first blood draw, 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 ground and five pounds sterling if you manage to make me pass out."
The Society of Arts at the Adelphi is now the Royal Society of Arts: it took possession of the horse in 1837, and the public exhibition was sponsored by the radical publisher George Cannon.
An illustration of the device is included in the original 1880s edition of Ashbee's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but was omitted from the 1969 new edition. It is unclear whether the original device was held by the Royal Society of Arts.
