Berkley Horse


The Berkley Horse is a BDSM apparatus, designed for, and by, Theresa Berkley in 1828. She referred to it as a "chevalet".
According to the account of Henry Spencer Ashbee:
He continues:
In one surviving letter, a customer hearing about the Berkley Horse proffered Theresa Berkley this pricing for her services: "a pound sterling for the first blood drawn, 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 floor, and five pounds sterling if you succeed in making me lose consciousness."
The Society of Arts at the Adelphi is now the Royal Society of Arts: they took possession of the Horse in 1837, with public exhibition promoted by radical publisher George Cannon. An illustration of the apparatus is reproduced in the original 1880s edition of Ashbee's Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but omitted from the 1969 reprint. It is unclear whether the original device was preserved by the Royal Society of Arts.