YearMonthDayEventMedia
"After approximately 4 years of gathering information from various sources, I am finally prepared to show others what I call my scrapbook. This incorporates the majority of the work that Tony De Blasé included in his original version of the leather history timeline. Portions of his timeline have not been used and information from other sources has been included. The information from other sources is indicated at the end of each item. If the item has not been referenced to another source, then it is from Tony De Blasé’s timeline.

This has been my attempt to join both the heterosexual and homosexual history of the BDSM/ Fetish/Leather Lifestyles. What originally started out as a personal interest hobby turned into a major project. Though this project does not cover all aspects of the BDSM/Fetish/Leather lifestyle, it does include a majority. This project will continue to grow as I stumble across more and more information.

The words on these pages are not my words, but instead those of others who have researched this lifestyle. Again, my main focus was to combine the information that had been obtained from both the het and homosexual sides of life. As I have found information as well, I have included that in this scrapbook as well. But as you thumb through all the pages of this scrapbook, you will see the difference between this and anything else you have seen in the past. It indeed is a scrapbook of our history." -- Gwen Hardy on the original Colors of Leather website.
-1900Destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Too bad the bible is not more explicit about the reason. The interpretation hinges on the Hebrew word meaning “to know.” The term is used 943 times in the Old Testament; only 15 of these times is it a euphemism for sexual activity. In the New Testament, the only reference to Sodom (Luke 10:10) identifies the sin as inhospitality. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah probably had nothing to do with sexuality.
-1503The reign of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut who adopted male dress and even wore a false beard.
-1250The Ani Papyrus shows the rite of the “animation of the phallus.” It appears to be one of the earliest recorded examples of a blowjob
-1000The Israelite king Saul demands of David, as a bride price for his daughter Michal, 100 Philistine foreskins
-899Ashurbanipal, the last Assyrian king, dresses in women’s clothing most of the time. The cross-dressing is used to justify his eventual overthrow.
-580Sappho’s famed girl’s school flourishes on the isle of Lesbos. Her ezusite love poems to students are the earliest known lesbian writings
-540The Etruscan Tomb of the Bulls at Tarquinia, with its fresco depicting one man anally penetrating another.
-4181225Birth of Epaminondas, one of the great military geniuses of the ancient world. Like other Greek warriors he loved boys, but for him delight in boys was complete, he never married or produced an heir. His two favorite boys fell in battle and, by his order, were buried with him in his tomb.
-300Addeaus of Macedon is quoted as saying, “When you meet a boy who pleases take action at once. Don’t be polite, just grab him by the balls and strike while the iron is hot.”
-186The Roman Senate attempts to suppress the Bacchanalian rites in which, according to the historian Livy, there is more debauchery among the men with each other than with the women.
-100713Birth of Gaius Julius Caesar in Rome. “Wife to every man and husband to every woman.”
-1Publication of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, the first self-help sex manual.
1Emperor Augustus banishes Publius Ovid for writing Ars Amatoria and for another unknown act. Ovid dies in the Greek town of Tomi eight years later. Ars Amatoria was banned in the United States until at least 1928. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
26The Roman Emperor Tiberius (born Nov 16, 42 BC) retires to Capri, where he indulges in all forms of sexual exploration.
79824Vesuvius erupts, thereby preserving the homoerotic, and other sexually explicit, wall murals that would surely have been destroyed by later Christian “civilizations”.
18844Birth of the Roman Emperor Caracalla. Gay—but not leather, he certainly set the standard for a bathhouse.
200Sebastian, a handsome young Roman Centurion is beloved by the emperor Diocletian, who turned against him when he embraces Christianity. He was stripped and tied to a tree and shot full of arrows by his fellow centurions. But he survives only to die many years later in a second martyrdom when he is stoned to death. St. Sebastian has been called the patron saint of gays, and the patron saint of SM.
300Mallanaga Vatsyayana compiles the Kama Sutra. It lists four ways of striking in the act of love; the areas of the body appropriate for this; and the lustful cries that the bottom may utter. The text specifies that beating, along with pinching and biting during intercourse, should only occur with the consent of the partner, as not all women find it arousing. (DACHS Timeline)
955Reign of Pope John XII who loves both boys and muscular young men, he dies at the age of 26 from a stroke while having sex with one of his beautiful young men.
1073All known copies of Sappho’s lesbian love poems are burned by ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople and Rome.
1076Archbishop Lanfranc in England orders a priest’s benediction on a marriage, but for another 100 years poor people continue to marry without benefit of clergy.
115798Birth of Richard Plantagenet, Richard Lion Heart, Richard I, King of England and Duke of Aquitaine. His lover for many years was Philip, King of France. He was one of the era’s most widely respected generals. But he produced no heirs and eventually his loathsome brother John ascended to the British throne. The result was the Magna Carta.
1210The flagellation movement arises in central Italy. This was a lay movement of religious fanatics; its adherents would flog or castigate themselves in penance, drawing blood in the process. Religious flagellation spread throughout central and western Europe and reached its peak during the Black Death years of 1348 and 1349. Pope Clement VI (1332-1352) issued a bull denouncing the flagellants and the Council of Constance prohibited the movement in 1417. During the 16th century numerous other penitent and flagellation groups emerged in France. In 1601 the Paris Parliament issued a directive against the brotherhood of flagellants in Bourges and soon followed this with the prosecution of all flagellant groups, citing among other grounds their immorality. Further prosecutions continued sporadically until around 1820. (DACHS Timeline)
1210The Council of Paris declares sodomy to be a capital offense. This marked the start of a militant anti-sodomy campaign by the Catholic Church.
1252St. Thomas Aquinas begins his theological teaching. He declares that God created sex organs exclusively for reproduction; homosexual acts were thus Unnatural” and heretical.
1260The Legal school of Orleans orders that women found guilty of lesbian acts have their clitoris removed for the first offense; that they be further mutilated for a second offense; and burned at the stake for a third.
146953Birth of Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian political philosopher. The Prince is a masterwork of mind control.
1474A Rooster is burned at the stake for "the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg”.
147536Birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti, (death 1564) Italian sculptor, painter and poet. Not a leatherman himself but certainly gay. And where would we be without his David to become, among other things, FeBe’s logo, and his wrestlers in a 69 of testicle torture!
1480Pico of Mirandola in Against the Astrologists, describes a male acquaintance who is sexually excited by being whipped before sex. This is the first known case history of a masochist.
1497Savonarola, a notorious and powerful censor who is also a religious fanatic with a large following, persuades the artists of Florence, Italy to bring their works - including drawings of nudes - to the bonfires. All copies of Ovid’s works then in Florence are burned as well, condemned as erotic, impious and tending to corrupt. The result causes some poets to no longer write verse, having been persuaded that such lines are wicked and impure. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1500Elena de Cespedes, a Spanish woman who lived as a man and married a woman, is discovered and immolated.
1533The “buggery” law is passed in England decreeing a penalty of death. This is the first time the offense is covered under civil, rather than church, law.
1534In his medical text, Onomastikon Medicinae, Otto Brunsfels (1488-1534) describes a man “who never could enjoy his wife if he was not soundly flogged to it before he made the attempt”, and also describes the trial of a cheese merchant accused of adultery, in which a prostitute testifies “that he could never have a forcible erection and perform a man’s part till she had whipped him on the back with rods, and that when the business was over, he could not be brought to a repetition unless excited by a second flogging. (DACHS Timeline)
1541The birth of the painter El Greco (death 1614) His men are martyrs or conquerors; in their gaunt visages he traces the weariness and the final exhaustion of the body in surrendering to the mystical vision, or the savage meditation of those entrusted with the flagellation of Heretics.”
1542Pope Paul III establishes the Universal Roman Inquisition, or Congregation of the Holy Office. One of the duties is to examine and condemn heretical or immoral works. The Congregation of the Holy Office lasts until 1965. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1550Reign of Pope Julius III who, upon election as Pope, made his 17 year old lover a member of the College of Cardinals, and also appointed him Secretary of State. His orgies with teenage Cardinals were common knowledge. Most were horrified but the Archbishop of Benevento wrote a book, In Praise of Sodomy, dedicated to the pope.
1551919Birth of Henri III, King of France. In the final years of his reign (he died at 37) he surrounded himself with handsome young men and abandoned himself to hedonistic joys. He took particular delight in flogging the backs of penitents marching in holy procession
1558Death of the French Advisor of Parliament Andre Tiraqueau. According to Ludovicius Caelius Rhodiginus, ,Tiraqueae was a devotee of sexual flagellation. (DACHS Timeline)
1559Pope Paul IV sends a list of books that he has banned to the Inquisition. The matter is referred to the Council of Trent (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1564The Council of Trent of the Catholic Church issues the Index librorum prohibitum (Index of Prohibited Books). The Index is updated every 50 years until 1948 and was finally rescinded in 1965. The index eventually included more that 4,000 works. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1576Brazil: Spanish explorers report that some native women give up all duties of women and imitate men...Each has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife.”
1580The English Poet Christopher Marlowe writes in an epigram: “when Francus comes to solace with his whore / He sends fro rods and strips himself stark naked; / for his lust sleeps, and will not rise before / by whipping of the wench it be awakened. / I envy him not, but wish I had the power, / to make his wench but one half hour.” (DACHS Timeline)
1585In one of the earliest recorded cases of masochism, Sister Mary Magdalene de Pazzi begs other nuns to tie her up and hurl hot wax at her. She also made a novice at the convent thrash her.
1590In Alectiones antique, Ludovicus Caelius Rhodiginus describes a man who needs to be whipped to have an erection.
1600318Fourteen year old Catalan de Erauso escapes from a Basque convent then goes on to serve in the Spanish army dressed as a man. In 1620 the Pope gives permission for her to continue to dress in men’s clothing.
1600Foundation in Russia by Danila Filippov of the Boshiye Iyundi sect (People of God in Russian), later more generally known as Khlysty (from the Russian word Khlyst, “whip”). The church service comprised ecstatic dances and a revival of flagellation. (DACHS Timeline)
1610The Virginia Colony passes the New World’s first sodomy law, decreeing the penalty of death for offenders.
1619Virginia: The first slaves are brought to North America. Quaker John Woolman later notes that despite their not being allowed legal marriage, Negroes marry after their own way.”
1624The engraving The Parlor Game Amsterdam 1624, shows a nobleman with his head deep in the lap of a lady’s skirts, being spanked on the buttocks by another two ladies. (DACHS Timeline)
1624The rule of Nzinga as King of Angola, this female to male cross dresser fought and won many battles against the Portuguese army.
1631Rembrandt sells rude etchings, thought to be of his wife pissing.
1639The German doctor Johann Heinrich Meibom describes the sexual excitement of some men when whipped in De usu flagrorum. He reasons that this is because the sperm fluid in the kidneys is heated by whipping and then descends to the testicles. Variations on this theory will dominate the thinking on SM until the 19th century.
1649Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon are charged with “lewd behavior each with other upon a bed” in Plymouth MA. Charges against Hammon are dropped, but Norman is convicted and has to make a public confession. She is the first woman in America know to be convicted of lesbian activity.
1655The colony of New Haven expands its definition of sodomy - a capital offense - to include sexual relations between women.
1660In one of the earliest erotic novels, the Academie des Dames (1660), a young woman permits an elderly priest to cane her on her bare behind. (DACHS Timeline)
1661All the Southern colonies, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania pass laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage.
1669Publication by the Danish physician Thomas Bartholinus of a new edition of Meibom’s Tractatus. It contains two additional letters, in which Bartholinus corresponds with Meibom the Younger, swapping in particular information on flagellation in Russia. (DACHS Timeline)
1677Using the newly invented microscope, Dutch researchers Leeuwenhoek and Ham observe human sperm for the first time.
1683John Wickins of England is prosecuted for printing and publishing The Whore’s Rhetorick. He is fined 40 shillings. [Possibly the first printer and publisher to be prosecuted on obscenity charges??]. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1694First mention of the Cerne Abbas Giant, a huge chalk drawing on the side of a hill near Dorchester, England. The naked giant with club and erect phallus is supposedly prehistoric. But why was it not noticed until now. Some suspect a 17th Century hoax designed to annoy the Puritans.
1698Kristian Franz Paullini confirms Meibom’s theory in Flagellum salutis, but claims that blood is warmed by whipping, which then excites the sperms in the testicles.
1700Publication of Abbe Boileau’s Historia Flagellantium de recto et perverso flagrorum usu apud christianos. This book covers religious flagellation from the time of the ancients to the end of the 17th century. (DACHS Timeline)
1700Prior to the publication of Venus School Mistress: A flower bouquet, fastened to the breast, is reported as having served as distinctive mark of flagellant prostitution. (DACHS Timeline)
1709Thought to be the earliest prosecution of an author in “modern” times, John Martin [Marten?] is indicted for “being evil disposed and wickedly intending to corrupt the subjects of the Lady the Queene and seduced by cupidty published and sold a scandalous book entitled Gonosologium novum, or a new system of all the secret infirmities and diseases natural accidental and venereal in men and women...” (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1712628Birth of Jean Jacques Rousseau (death July 2, 1778). By his own reports, except for one relationship, the artist was a lifelong unfulfilled masochist, dating from a school spanking when he was 11. In one affair, he had a Mistress who dominated him thoroughly, but even she refused to re-enact his much-desired spanking. Rousseau’s masochism is described in his autobiography, “Confessions”.
1712Colonial Massachusetts makes it a crime to publish “any filthy, obscene, or profane song, pamphlet, libel or mock sermon”. (Acts and Laws of the Province of Mass. Bay, c. CV, 8) (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1718Publication in London of Meibom’s Tractatus in English translation. It includes a picture of a man flogging a woman with another woman looking on. (DACHS Timeline)
1725Edmund Curll (1683-1747) is arrested in England for publishing Venus in the Cloister [An English translation of Vénus dans le Cloître, 1683] and Meibomius’s Treatise of Flogging (translation by George Sewell). He’s released but he’s arrested again in 1726 after further investigation by the police and for publishing The Prisoner’s Advocate, a government spy’s (John Ker) memoirs of his experiences in the King’s Bench Prison. Curll is finally sentenced in February 1728. He’s fined 25 marks for each of the two erotic books and 20 marks plus one hour in the pillory for publishing Ker’s memoirs. It is Curll’s trial that leads the Court of King’s Bench to define the law of obscene libel. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
17341023Birth in Sacy near Auxerre in France of the author and typographer Nicolas-Edme Restiff, better known as Restif de la Bretonne. Restif is described by Havelock Ellis as the first well-documented case of a shoe and foot fetishist. The (rare) term...retifism” for shoe and foot fetishism is derived from his name. (DACHS Timeline)
174062The Birth of the Marquis deSade. (Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade)
174811The first volume of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), written by John Cleland (1709-1789), is printed by Thomas Parker and published in London by G. Fenton [Fenton Griffiths, pseudo. for Ralph Griffiths]. The second volume follows in early February 1749. Cleland wrote the story while serving a sentence for debt in Fleet Prison in hopes of selling enough copies to pay off his debts. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1749129Birth of King Christian VII of Denmark, whose physician assigned him a sadistic male lover who beat him regularly.
17493A warrant is issued for the arrest of the author, printer and publisher of Fanny Hill. By the end of the month, Cleland, Parker and Griffiths are free on bail. While awaiting trial Cleland edits out most of the erotic content and in March 1750 the expurgated result is published in one volume as Memoirs of Fanny Hill. Despite heated exchanges of letters between the Secretary of State, the Attorney-General and the Bishop of London, not to mention the groveling letters from Cleland and Ralph Griffiths blaming everything on a non-existent brother he calls Fenton, it appears the case is never pursued. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1749Publication of Fanny Hill, by John Cleland. The novel about a London prostitute is immediately suppressed, but it has enjoyed enormous popularity for more than two centuries.
17631029By order of the King of France, the Marquis de Sade is committed to Vincennes fortress for excesses committed in a brothel which he has been frequenting for a month
1767Birth of Jacques Baron Reverony de Saint-Cyr. Saint-Cyr was influenced by de Sade and was author of various plays, scientific works and novels. He was, according to Iwan Bloch, the first sadistic author. (DACHS Timeline)
176843On Easter Sunday, at about nine o’clock in the morning The Marquis de Sade accosts Rose Keller; she accompanies Sade in a cab to Arcueil. There, in his rented cottage, he orders her to undress, threatens her with a knife, and flogs her.
177293Verdict: The Marquis de Sade, and his manservant Latour, are found guilty. The former of crimes of poisoning and sodomy, and the latter of the crime of sodomy, and are condemned to expiate their crimes at the cathedral porch before being taken to the Place Saint-Louis for the said Sade to be decapitated and the said Latour to be hanged by the neck and strangled... then the body of the said Sade and that of the said Latour to be burned and their ashes strewn to the wind. On Sept 12 Sade and Latour are executed in effigy on the Place des Precheurs, in Aix.
177579Birth of Matthew Gregory “Monk” Lewis in London. A master at writing the silly, overripe 18th Century Gothic romance novels that are still fun to read. In his Ambrosio, or the Monk (1795) Ambrosio is seduced by a woman driven to blind nymphomania by demons, who enters the monastery and Ambrosias’ bed disguised as a boy. His sins are found out and he is tortured by the Inquisition, sentenced to death, and bargains with the Devil, who destroys him.
1776117M. Trillet comes to La Coste to claim his daughter, who is known in the chateau as Justine. During an argument with the Marquis de Sade, Trillet fires a pistol shot at him almost point blank, but misses. He runs off to the La Coste Township where he babbles about what has happened. Later Catherine (aka Justine) sends someone to find her father, who returns to the chateau. Here she tries to calm him but Trillet, who has brought four other men back with him, flies into another rage and fires a second shot into a court hared where he thinks Sade to be. All five men then flee.
1776213The Marquis de Sade is arrested by inspector Marais at the Hotel de Danemark, on the rue Jacob and taken to Vincennes fortress where, at 9:30 that night, he is formally entered as a prisoner.
1776418In a letter from the Marquis de Sade to his wife: I am in a tower closed in by nineteen iron doors, with light reaching me only through two little windows, each with a score of iron bars. He complains that in over the two months he has been in prison he has been allowed only five walks of one hour each, in a sort of tomb about forty feet square surrounded by walls more than fifty feet high.
177697After winning a trial, and escaping from authorities, the Marquis de Sade is again incarcerated at Vincennes prison.
1776Publication of Le Paysan (Ghardy)
1781Publication of Confessions, Rousseau’s autobiographic work, finished in 1765. In it, he describes the arousal that he felt when thinking of dominant women ever since he was punished as a child by his Approximately 30 year old teacher Miss Lambercier. (DACHS Timeline)
1782712The Marquis de Sade completes the manuscript of his Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man.
1783Publication of History of the Flagellants or the advantages of discipline being a paraphrase and commentary of the Abbe Boileau Doctor of the Sorbonne by one who is not a Doctor of the Sorbonne by John Louis Delolme. An unusual volume looking at the history of Flagellation for both discipline and religion with many interesting examples of punishment by priests, beatings etc., often received by the recipient with thanks. A serious study now viewed as a celebration of masochism, and very scarce. 426 pages with index with 2 small plates and 2 full page plates. (GHardy)
1784229The Marquis de Sade is transferred from the Vincennes prison to the Bastille.
17851022The Marquis de Sade begins the final revision of his draft of a major work. The 120 Days of Sodom or The School for Libertines, while being held as a prisoner in the Bastille. When the Marquis leaves the Bastille in 1789, the manuscript stays behind and comes into the possession of the family Villeneuve-Trans who kept it safe for three generations. Until the twentieth century, it was thought to be lost. (DACHS Timeline)
1785The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue includes the phrase “gentlemen of the back door” as a slang term for gay men.
1785Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740-1814) writes 120 Journées de Sodom (aka 120 Days of Sodom). Sade writes the story onto sheets of paper that are pasted together into a roll about 12 metres in length and 11 centimetres wide. In 1789, ten days before the Bastille is stormed and destroyed (where Sade is imprisoned), he is quickly evacuated from his cell and moved to Charenton. In the confusion, his manuscript is left behind. Sade believes the manuscript lost but it’s later discovered by one of the revolutionaries. Unbelievably, that original manuscript still exists to this day in a private collection. As far as I can determine, Sade’s works have never been banned in the United States. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1786The caricaturist James Gillray publishes a flagellation scene: “Lady Termagant Flayburn going to give her stepson a taste of her desert after dinner.” (DACHS Timeline)
1787King George III issues a Royal Proclamation “For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality’, including the suppression of all ‘loose and licentious Prints, Books, and Publications, dispersing Poison to the minds of the Young and Unwary and to Punish the Publishers and Vendors thereof”. This law was policed by groups such as the Proclamation Society, which later becomes the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1802. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
178831The Marquis de Sade begins work on his short novel Eugenie de Franval, which he completes in six days.
1788Publication of Venus School Mistress or Birchen Sports in England, a flagellant publication of great popularity. (DACHS Timeline)
1788The French doctor Francois Amedee Doppet confirms Meibom and Paullini’s theory. He expands it by pointing out that women always have warm vaginas after whipping. At the end of his article Das Beisseln und sein Auswirkunauf den Geschlechtstrieb he gives safety tips for flagellants. This is the first known SM safety text!
178972The Bastille logbook notes that The Count de Sade shouted several times from the window of the Bastille that the prisoners were being slaughtered and that the people should come to liberate them.
178974At 1:00 AM, as a result of a report made to Lord de Villedeuil on the Marquis de Sade’s conduct on July 2, he is transferred to Charenton Asylum by Inspector Quidor.
1789714The Bastille is stormed and the Marquis de Sade’s cell is sacked. His furniture, his suites, linen, his library and most important, his manuscripts are burned, pillaged, torn up and carried off.
1789826In France, freedom of speech and freedom of the press is established (Article 11) in La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens). However, In 1791 a law is passed making criminal public assaults on the modesty of women by indecent action, the exposure for sale of obscene pictures, and the corruption of young persons, which basically wiped out Article 11 (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
179042De Sade is released from Charenton Asylum.
17911022First performance at the Theatre Moliere of Sade’s Le Comte Oxtiern ou les effets du libertinage. A second performance occurs two weeks later, which gives rise to a disturbance and causes Sade to suspend further performances.
1791Publication of Justine by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1841) in France. In the same year a second extended version, in 1792 a third and in 1794 a fourth are published. The final edition is published in 1797 in ten volumes, together with Juliette. (DACHS Timeline)
1792Civil marriage is established after the revolution in France.
1800In several European cities, the police takes in creasing action against flagellation brothels.
1800in Washington DC, We'wha, a two-spirit leader and representative for the Native American Zuni tribe, is married to a man.
180136Sade and his publisher, Nicolas Masse, are arrested. Police searches find manuscripts and printed works, including Juliette and La Nouvelle Justine and a tapestry depicting the most obscene subjects, most of which were drawn from the infamous novel Justine.
180142The Minister of Police decides that a trial would cause too much of a scandal which an exemplary punishment would still not make worthwhile So de Sade is placed in Sainte-Pelagie prison as Administrative punishment for being the author of that infamous novel Justine and of that still more terrible work Juliette.
1801Under Napoleon I., the works of de Sade are confiscated and destroyed in france
1802Great Britian's Society for the Suppression of Vice and for the Encouragement of Religion and Virtue throughout the United Kingdom is established to "check the spread of open vice and immorality, corrupting influence of impure and licentious books, prints, and other publications..."
1808English chalk illustration of The Parlour Game by James Gillray. A man kneels and kisses the shoes of a woman, many people watch.
18091229Birth of William Gladsone (death May 19, 1898) The four time Prime Minister of England was dedicated to self flagellation both to punish himself for impure thoughts and to achieve a pleasure from the act, which he then repented.
1809New York: In Genton vs Reed, the state Supreme Court recognizes common-law marriage, which won’t be declared void until 1901.
1810The mother of a schoolgirl accuses Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, mistresses at a boarding school for girls, of improper and criminal conduct with each other, The British courts debate whether a sexual relationship between women was even possible. Lillian Hellman used this plot 120 years later as the basis for her play The Children's Hour.
1814122Death, at Charenton Asylum of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, the Marquis.
1820512Birth of Florence Nightingale, who is alleged to have said, "I have lived and slept in the same bed with English Countesses and Prussian farm women...No woman has excited passion among women more than I have."
18211111Birth of Feodor Dostoeovski (death Feb. 9, 1881). The writer’s letters to his beloved Anna are peppered with direct references to his fetish for her feet. His contemporary, Turgenev, called him the Russian Marquis de Sade, perhaps suggesting more than the Anna letters reveal.
1821 (illustrated) is banned in the United States for obscenity (Commonwealth v. Holmes, 17 Mass. 336). This is generally regarded as the first recorded suppression of a literary work in the United States on grounds of obscenity.
1825828Birth of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, German sexologist and activist
1828For Theresa Berkley, the owner of a flagellation brothel in Charlotte Street no. 28, London, a special whipping bench is constructed which becomes generally known as the "Berkley Horse". The original of of the Berkley Horse goes to the London Society of Arts after her death.
1830Publication in France of the two volume work La Marquise de Gange, of which de Sade is the anonymous author.
1834Publication of by lawyer Carl August Fetzer, under the pseudonym of Giovanni Frusta and as an alleged translation from the Italian. The publication illuminates the sexual misuse of religious flagellantism.
1835615Birth of Adah Isaacs Menken (death Aug. 25 1868). This most famed sexpot of the Victorian age was the star of Mazeppa. She flashed apparent nudity in the face of Emperor Franz Josef -- he like it. She was also the lover in reality, or publicly held fantasy, of many famous men including numerous crowned heads and chiefs of government. She was once paid by Dante Gabriel Rosetti to spend the night with poet Charles Swinburne, giving him the flogging he wanted, possibly in an attempt on Rosetti's part to convince the poet that women were desirable sex partners.
1836127Birth of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, author of Venus in Furs. The man who put the "M" in SM.
1836Death of Threse Berkeley who supervised a flagellant brothel at 28 Charlotte St, London. Ms Berkeley is the inventor of the Berkley bench/horse, a specialized piece of furniture for flogging and bondage. Her memories that had been announced for publication long in advance are held back by the executor of her will, Dr. Vance, and are not published even after his death. Her numerous boxes of correspondence - reported to have included very compromising letters - were probably destroyed by Vance.
183745Birth of British poet Charles Algernon Swinburne who wrote many lines in praise of switches on asses.
1840814Birth of German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Mannheim, Germany
1842The Tariff Act of 1842 (c270, 28, 5 Stat. 566) is enacted. The is the first U.S. federal law designed to restrict the flow of obscenity by prohibiting the "importation of all indecent and obscene prints, paintings, lithographs, engravings and transparencies". Up until the 1840s there was no pornography being produced in the United States so it had to be quietly and clandestinely imported.
1843Hungarian physician Heinrich Kaan publishes his report named Psychopathia sexualis, reinterpreting sins of the flesh as psychological disorders. The theological terms Adeviation, Aaberation, and Aperversion are introduced into medicine.
1843Massachusetts repeals its 138-year-old antimiscegenation law.
1844725Birth of Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia. The great American artist specialized in painting muscular, nude male models, nude male athletes and nude male bathers.
18441015The birth of Friedrich Nietzche. (death Aug. 25 1900). The philosopher was not an ardent of SM, but listed among the four women in his life one married woman whom he flogged during sex and who, dressed as a man, beat him senseless before another sexual encounter. Also, a photo of Nietzche shows him as one of two gentlemen horses pulling a cart on which Lou Andreas-Salome (not the married woman) crouches with a knotted whip raised
185656Birth of Sigmund Freud in Freiberg, Austria.
1857222The birth, in London, of Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, army officer, and homosexual.
1857Publication of The Merry Order of St Bridget: Personal Recollections of the Use of the Rod by Margaret Anson. It is, in short, the memoirs of a nun and her exposure to flagellation. (GHardy)
1857French physician B. A. Borel champions the concept of physical and mental degeneration that is also used to explain incorrect sexual behavior. The concept will dominate psychiatric thinking until Freud.
1858612Birth of Henry Scott Tuke, British painter and grand master of romantic boy painting. He was an athlete who took great pride in his splendid body and was obsessed with painting nude boys and experimented, and succeeded, in developing a special technique for capturing on canvas the effect of sunlight on naked skin.
185922The British physician and essayist Henry Havelock Ellis is born in Croydon. Between 1897 and 1928, Ellis publishes the studies in the Psychology of Sex in seven volumes. He discerns that sadism and masochism are no contraries, and that the pleasures of both variants is limited to sexual context. In England his works are forbidden until 1935. In his autobiography, he writes about his own urophilia (usage of urine in sexual context) and declares “It proved of immense benefit to me, for it was the germ of a perversion and it enabled me to understand sympathetically the nature of perversions.” (DACHS Timeline)
186286Birth of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, professor of classics at Cambridge where the students were only too happy to satisfy his tastes as a boot-fetishist. He wrote of one young man, “I liked him to stand upon me when we met.”
1862The diplomat Karl Freiherr von Martens dies and is thus hindered to finish a large publication on flagellation. The manuscript is lost. After his death, von Marten’s extensive collection of castigation and punishment tools is auctioned publicly in Dresden. (DACHS Timeline)
1865715Death of James Miranda Barry (1795-1865) a Major General and Surgeon in the British Army with a highly distinguished career and a reputation as a rake who was known to flirt openly with the best looking women in the room. When a charwoman was preparing the body for burial it was discovered that the Major General was female.
1865In 1864 an alarmed postmaster general reported that “great numbers” of dirty pictures and books were being mailed to Civil War troops. Congress reacted quickly to the postmaster’s report, passing a law making it a crime to send any “obscene book, pamphlet, picture, print, or other publication of vulgar and indecent character” through the United States mail. (Post Office Act, chap. 89, sec. 16, 13 Stat. 504, 507). (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1866528The German graphic artist Franz von Bayros is born in Agram. Many of his erotic works have S&M themes. (DACHS Timeline)
1866Publication of Superstition & Force by Henry Charles Lea in Britain. Edited and republished as The Ordeal by Edward Peters in 1973.
1867The British magazine Englishwoman’s Domestic prints hundreds of letters about very tight-laced corsetry, many with clearly sadomasochistic undertones. (DACHS Timeline)
1868514The Jewish physician and sexual reformer Magnus Hirschfeld is born in Kolberg. (DACHS Timeline)
1868Benjamin Hicklin, a British magistrate, prosecutes a militant Protestant who published an anti-Catholic pamphlet that denounced the “depravity” of the confessional booth (Regina v. Hicklin, L.R.3 Q.B. 360).

Hicklin states that the test for obscenity should reside in the material’s “tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” and allows a work to be ruled obscene based on isolated passages taken out of context. In addition, Hicklin provides that a search warrant could be issued on any individual’s sworn information that obscene publications are kept for sale or distribution on any premises, and that it’s the owner who is required to prove why the materials should not be confiscated and destroyed (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1869128In Austria Leopold von Sacher-Masoch begins correspondence with Fanny Pistor, aka Baroness Bogdonoff, aka Mistress Wanda, his Venus in Furs.
1870Publication of Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs) by Leopold von Sacher-Masch, which becomes a bestseller. Following this, circles of readers and fans of Sacher-Masoch form, which are germ cell of the sadomasochistic subculture. In personal ads, too, people search for like minded people and possible partners referring to Sacher-masoch writings. (DACHS Timeline)
1870Publicatoin of an illustrated book about Flagellation and the Flagellants by Englishman James G. Bertman publishes, under the pseudonym of Rev. Wm. Cooper, . A history of the rod in all countries from the earliest period to the present time. (DACHS Timeline)
187248The American escape artist and magician Ehrich Weiss, better known as Harry Houdini is born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Houdini is sort of a patron of all bondage practitioners, even though he cheated. At his time, he was one of the rare sources for publicly available bondage pictures in often extreme situations. (DACHS Timeline)
1873128In France the birth of writer Sidomie-Gabrielle Colette (d. 1954), who wore a bracelet engraved; “I belong to Missy.”
1873Anthony Comstock (later leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice) successfully lobbied congress to pass an omnibus anti-obscenity act. This piece of legislation, the so-called “Comstock Act” expanded the scope and penalties contained in the existing federal obscenity statute and remains a foundation of federal obscenity law today. (Robert Bienvenu)

18 U.S.C. section 1461 deals with the transmission of obscene material in mail and 18 U.S.C. section 1472 prohibits the transport of obscene material in interstate commerce. (Robert Bienvenu)

Be it enacted… That whoever, within the District of Columbia or any of the Territories of the United States…shall sell…or shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit, or shall otherwise publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in his possession, for any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper of other material, or any cast instrument, or other article of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section…can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States…he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1873The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice [NYSSV] is founded by Anthony Comstock. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1877430Birth of Alice B. Toklas. “Throughout most of her life, this selfless woman’s major occupation was the care and maintenance of Gertrude Stein.”
18797The first erotic magazine, The Pearl, a Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading, consisting of stories with flagellation themes and attributed to Algernon Charles Swinburne, is distributed among high society. It last for 18 issues until Dec. 1880.
1879The operational definition of obscenity used in most American courts was derived from a 1868 English case, Regina vs. Hicklin. The Hicklin case defined obscenity as citing: The test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall. (Robert Bienvenu)

The Hicklin test was established in American law in the 1879 case of U.S. vs. Bennett in which jurors were instructed to evaluate isolated passages of an allegedly obscene book. They were to ….find them obscene if they “tend” to “deprave the minds of those open to such influences”, if they would suggest impure and libidinous thoughts in the minds of the young and inexperienced. This statute continued until 1957. (Robert Bienvenu)
1880826The French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, originally Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, is born in Rom. Apollinaire predicted that the works of de Sade, which he edited, would dominate the 20th century. He wrote several erotic novels. The best-known being “The Eleven Thousand Rods.” (DACHS Timeline)
1880Flagellation of Christ is painted by William Adolphe Bougereau
1880Publication of Nana by Emile Zola. A prostitute ruins a man, She orders him to crawl on all fours and to bark like a dog. She laughs at him and humiliates him. Zola was inspired by the true story of the Duke Muffat, who was enslaved by a beautiful sadistic prostitute all his life. (DACHS Timeline)
188222Birth of James Joyce, avant-garde novelist who made his lover, Nora Barnacle, into a dominant of whom he begged beatings and floggings in earnest. We don’t know if she said yes or no.
1882725Percy Grainger is born in Melbourne, Australia. The famous Australian pianist, composer, conductor and self-confident sadomasochist extensively documented his flagellant obsession with photographs. He dies February 20, 1961 in White Plains, USA. (DACHS Timeline)
1882In Pace vs Alabama, the USA Supreme Court upholds a law that makes interracial adultery more serious than interracial adultery, arguing that interracial couples would produce genetically inferior offspring.
1886222The Birth of William Seaabrook (death Sept 20, 1945). This top-rated writer about exotic places (from personal experience) was equally famous among the literat for his elaborate, long-term bondage of beautiful, young women.
1886Publication of Psychopathia Sexualis by Austrian police physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing with 110 pages and 45 case histories. He creates the diagnosis of Apaedophilia and adopts sadism from earlier French usage. Masochism is not introduced until the sixth edition.
1887In his essay, Le Fetichisme dans l”amour, the French psychologist Alfred Binet used the expression “Fetishism” for the first time in its modern meaning. The concept of erotic fetishism is taken up later by von Krafft-Ebing and others. (DACHS Timeline)
1888815The birth of Thomas Edward Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, who was captured, caned and raped by Turkish soldiers, and who loved it so madly he hired Robert Bruce to flog him regularly after he returned to England.
1888Publication of The History of Flagellation
1888The Austrian psychoanalyst Theodor Reik is born in Vienna. A masochist himself, Reik studied psychology and later moved on to psychoanalysis after he met Freud in 1910. His anecdotic, chatty publications contributed to the distribution of the psychoanalytic views on masochism (DACHS Timeline)
1890Publication of Amours Tourmentees by Sacher Masoch
1890Publication of Les Debauches
189265Birth of Ivy Compton-Burnett, British novelist whose work has been called “morality plays for the tough-minded,” and who lived most of her life in total subservience to Margaret Jourdain, a scholar and expert in 18th Century furniture.
1892712The Polish author, illustrator and Kafka translator Bruno Schulz is born in Drogobytsch in Galicia. Scultz illustrated Venus in Furs. His book of an Idolator deals with the dominance of man by woman. His etchings are none too sophisticated but very explicit. On November 19, 1942, he is murdered by the Gestapo. (DACHS Timeline)
1892The New York Times becomes the first US newspaper to use the word lesbian in a news story: "Lesbian Love and Murder" about a suicide pact made by two young women after their parents forbid them to see each other.
18931015In the magazine Zeitgeist, an addition to the Berliner Tageblatt, an article of Otto Brandes with the title Die Auspeotscherin (The Whipperess) is published. (DACHS Timeline)
18931030Birth of bodybuilder Charles Atlas, who, though not gay, made a major contribution to the beauty of men.
189539Official date of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s death from heart failure as given by his family. This incorrect date is still found in a large number of texts. Actual date of death: 1905 see below.
1895Publication of Bom-Crioulo, The Black Man and The Cabin Boy by Adolfo Caninha in Brazil
1896924The American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is born. Fitzgerald was a foot fetishist, describes this disposition as “Freudian complex” and went to great lengths to hide his own naked feet from the gaze of others. (DACHS Timeline)
1896The English researcher Havelock Ellis starts work on his monumental book, Studies in the Psychology of Sex.
1896The United States Supreme Court uses the Hicklin definition of what constitutes obscenity in the case of Rosen v. United States. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1897Archaeologists working in Egypt find some of the lost poetry of Sappho on papyrus scrolls used to line ancient coffins and to stuff the carcasses of mummified animals.
1898Publication of Photo Bits begins and lasts until 1916. Photo Bits was part of a line of publications that merged into London Life in 1926. The content of the magazine was not exclusively erotic (as in London Life) but texts, photographs and drawings of a variety of fetish and SM images filled the pages of Photo Bits.

Recurring topics included tight-lacing, high-heel shoe fetishism, SM topics of flagellation, female domination and trasvestism and related SM topics of petticoat discipline where men or boys were forced to wear female clothing. (Robert Bienvenu)
1898George Bedborough is arrested and prosecuted for selling “a certain lewd, wicked, bawdy, scandalous and obscene libel in the form of a book”.....Havelock Ellis’ (1859-1939) seven volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex; more specifically, the volume Sexual Inversion, a controversial study of homosexuality which argues that homosexuality is inherited and inborn (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1899Publication of the first issue of the Jahrbuch der sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Journal of Sexual Intermediates) by Magnus Hirschfeld.
1899Publication of The Torture Garden, a novel by Octave Mirbeau in France. First English edition in 1931. ReSearch edition 1989.
1899The German sexologist Albert Moll reports on cases of flagellation between gays and draws a parallel between passive flagellation and a preference for passive anal intercourse, which he both attributes to an appetite for stimulation of the buttock area. (DACHS Timeline)
1901Publication of Flagellation in France
1901The death in New York of Mary Anderson, who had lived as Murray Hall and had married two women.
1902129Birth of John Alexander Scott Coutts , better known by his artist pseudonym John Willie is born in Singapore as the son of a rich British entrepreneur. (Robert Bienvenu)
1902Publication of Condamnations Litteraires La Flagellation (Ghardy)
1902Publication of Gynecocratie in France (Ghardy)
1902Publication of Magnetism of the Rod (Ghardy)
1902Richard von Krafft-Ebing dies in Graz, Austria at age 62 of multiple strokes.
1903Publication of History of Flagellation
1903Publication of Studies in the Psychology of Sex by British physician Havelock Ellis.
1904102The British author and journalist Graham Greene is born in Berkhamsted (Great Britain). Greene had a sadomasochistic relationship with Catherine Walston and let her burn him with cigarettes. His play A House of Reputation (circa 1950) deals with sadomasochistic themes. (DACHS Timeline)
1904Publicaton of the manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom by Iwan Bloch - under the pseudonym Eugen Duhren - which had been reported lost for a long time. Bloch had found and bought the manuscript at a French antique dealer. (DACHS Timeline)
1905Publication of ADrei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud. Sadism and masochism are described as illnesses resulting from incomplete or faulty development of a child’s personality. Psychoanalysis, a form of speculative philosophy with no empirical basis, becomes the dominating theory in psychiatry for the next 60 years.
1905Publication of The Memoirs of a Voluptuary, the Secret Life of an English Boarding School by Anonymous in Britain. US edition in 1971.
1905Leopold von Sacher-Masoch dies in an insane asylum in Mannheim, Germany.
1906Publication of Meine Lebensbeichte (My Life’s Confession), an autobiography by Wanda von Sacher-Masoch. In it, she distances herself from S&M and says that she was seduced by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. After publication, a debate with Sacher-Masoch’s publisher Schlichtegroll followed, who gave an opposing assessment. (DACHS Timeline)
1906A French Publishing Company select Bibliotheque published material specializing in Sadomasochistic and Fetishistic novels. A 1937 list of the firm’s products listed 87 novels with titles such as Le dressage de La Maid-esclave (1930 The Training of the Maid-slave), Atte Lages Humains (1931 Humans Harnessed) and La Reine Esclave (1927 The Slave Queen). Prominent themes in these works included flagellation, humiliation, female domination, transvestism and figure training. (Robert Bienvenu)
1907923Birth of the French author Anne Declos, aka Dominique Aury, aka Pauline Reage, the author of Historie d-O. (death: April 26 1998)
1908Publication of The Intermediate Sex by Edward Carpenter in England. (GHardy)
1909423In Woodside, OH, the birth of writer Samuel M. Steward, aka Phil Andros. As sex researcher Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey’s major contact with the world of homosexual male SM he arranged and participated in scenes staged for Kinsey’s cameras.
19091028The British painter Francis Bacon is born in Dublin. Bacon was a gay sadomasochist (DACHS Timeline)
1910514Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein begin living together in Paris
19101219Birth in Paris of Jean Genet, his gay and SM themed works include The Balcony, Querelle du Brest, and Our Lady of the Flowers. (Death in 1986) Genet was a gay sadomasochist.
1910Among the Klementi tribe in Albania, if a virgin swore to twelve witnesses that she refused to ever marry, she would be allowed to live as a man carrying weapons and herding livestock.
1910Magnus Herschel creates the term transvestite and is the first to separate them from homosexuals.
1911Birth of Irving Klaw (GHardy)
1913Publication of Die Weiberherrschaft (Women’s Rule) by sexologist Alfred Kind in Munich. It is a two-volume essay about dominant women with numerous illustrations from the private collection of Eduard Fuchs. In 1914 the first, in 1931 the second additional volume was published. Even Kind spoke out very critically on the theories of Krafft-Ebing and his successors. Eduard Fuchs was author, collector, historian, politician and patron; his extensive art collection is confiscated by the Gestapo on October 25, 1933 and partly destroyed. In 1937 and 1938 the collection was sold off at various auctions. Eduard Fuchs dies on January 26, 1940 in exile in Paris. (DACHS Timeline)
1913The Yva Richard Company began in France in 1913 and was the most prominent producers of SM and fetishistic paraphernalia during the 1930’s. Founded by husband and wife team of stylists, Nativa and Richard L. in 1917 when Yva Richard first advertised their products, their firm specialized in coutree, particularly “high-class” lingerie. In 1923, the product line expanded to include photographs and were used for advertisements and ephemera issued by the firm but also sold separately in the form of albums and photo sets. The model in Many Yva Richards photographs was Nativa herself, clad in costumes ranging from lingerie to bizarre fetish outfits in metal and leather. Yva Richard closed in 1943 in a Paris under German occupation. (GHardy)
1915525Foreseeing a wartime shortage, Amy Lowell hoards 10,000 of her favorite Havana cigars in her home in Brookline, MA. (born Feb 9, 1874)
19161230On this date Grigori Rasputin is murdered. The Russian monk, who was a famous sexual adventurer, spent some years initiating women into the reportedly Christian cult of flagellants before he settled into the court of Nicholas and Alexandria. There is no evidence that his position in the Russian court stopped or impeded his involvement with the female flagellants cult.
191861Publication of London Life's first issue on June 1, 1918 but the fetish penetration did not begin until 1923 and continued until the publication’s London office was bombed by the German, Luftwaffe in 1941 when 10,000 pounds of machinery and all the files were destroyed. London life was not exclusively devoted to “kinks”. They provided space to fashion, film, theater, movie stars, gossip, sports and current events.

Fiction and non-fiction articles addressed bizarre topics, but the key medium within the magazine for the discussion of kinks was the correspondence section. Much of the fetishistic content of the magazine was generated by the readership itself

London Life provided a key advertising venue for producers who served an international market, thus London Life provided the key medium that brought many individuals into contact with businesses that produced paraphernalia necessary for their kink.

These businesses would provide referrals that put interested practitioners into contact with each other. Thus new members would enter the network. It was though such a referral that John Coutts, (aka John Willie) later the publisher of Bizarre magazine was put into contact with members of the American network in Chicago and New York. Coutts lived in Sydney, Australia when this occurred. (Robert Bienvenu)
191936Birth of William “Bill” Hess Ward was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Ward was cartoon artist who began his professional career at the age of 15 as the sports cartoonist for a local newspaper. At the age of 17, Ward spent a week in Ocean City, Maryland where he earned a buck a pop, drawing images of women onto jackets. (GHardy)
1919Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Institute for Sexology in Berlin. The Institute combines the world’s first sex counseling center, a museum, a library and an ongoing series of educational events.
192058The birth in Finland of Touko Laaksonen, the erotic artist who would become known to leather men of the world as Tom of Finland. (Died 1992).
19201031The photographer of erotic art, Helmut Newton is born in Berlin. After his departure from Germany before 1940, he acquires Australian citizenship. Newton publishes a multitude of photos with S&M motives. They later become a peg to hang on the censorship campaign “PorNO” of Alice Schwarzer. (DACHS Timeline)
1920Publication of Les Batteuses d’Hommes by Sacher Masoch (GHardy)
1920Publication of Painful Pleasures by Gargoyle Press in a run of just 1500 copies ‘for students of Sociology and adult collectors of curiosa’. It has been translated out of the French and adapted from original English sources by Walter J. Meusal, with a foreword by the Editor (GHardy)
1921329The birth in London of actor Dirk Bogarde whose autobiography reveals an adolescent seduction by a man who first mummy wrapped him in bandages.
1921916The First Congress for Sexual Reform opens at Berlin’s Institute for Sexology.
1921Birth of Leonard Burtman, later publisher of Bizarre Life and Exotique magazines. (GHardy)
19221119Iwan Bloch dies in Berlin. His large-scale project, the Manual of the complete sexology in Individual Portraits. Of which three volumes had been published up to this date, remains unfinished. Bloch is buried in the cemetery of the Jewish community in Berlin. (DACHS Timeline)
1922The German artist Otto Dix paints the picture Sadisten Gewidmet, (Dedicated to Sadists), which shows two dominatrixes in a torture chamber. (DACHS Timeline)
1922Birth, in Hailey, Idaho, of Bob Mizer, creator of the Athletic Model Guild and Physique Pictorial. Died: May 19, 1992.
1923422Bettie Mae Page is born in Nashville, as second of six children. The forename of the future Pin-Up model is given as “Betty” on her birth certificate but since school days she signs with “Bettie”. (DACHS Timeline)
1923Birth of artist Gene Bilbrew, Also known as Van Rod, G.B. Bond and ENEG. (GHardy)
1923Samuel Roth (1894-1974) is charged with mailing obscene literature [The Perfumed Garden - Kama Shastra Society]. He’s found guilty and sentenced to 6 months, suspended. For the next 30 years Roth is arrested at least 13 different times for possession and sale of indecent literature, mailing obscene and salicious material, etc. His last arrest and conviction is in 1955. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1923The Viennese teacher and dominatrix, Edith Kadivec, (Also often “Cadivec”) is found guilty of immorality and is convicted to six years of severe incarceration after a sensational law-suit. In the revision, the conviction is reduced to five years. Through the intercession of influential friends, Kadivec is pardoned after only one year, which she serves in the women’s prison St. Poelten near Vienna.

She writes two numerously re-printed diaries, Avovals and Experiences and Eros: The Meaning of my Life. (DACHS Timeline)
19241210The Society for Human Rights, founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber (1892-1972), probably the first “gay lib” organization in the US, is granted a charter by the Illinois legislature. It lasted only a few months but during that time Gerber brought out two issues of the country’s first gay liberation magazine, Friendship and Freedom. No copies of these are known to still exist.
1924Publication of History of Flagellation by Medical Publishing.
1924Publication of the 17th edition of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis. It will be translated into seven languages.
1925114The birth of Yukio Mishima. His erotic drive was always advanced by his fantasies of SM-drawn blood. His suicide (Nov. 25, 1970) blended his erotic fantasies, his political theories and his flair for public drama.
1925521The birth of Dr. Franklin Kameny, founder of the Mattachine Society and spiritual godfather of all contemporary activists for sexual freedoms.
192582Birth of Roy Dean, photographer of the American Male in the all together, and often in nature as well. He is also the power behind Colt Studios and, as an artist, is known as both Colt, and in the pre frontal nudity days, as Lugar.
1926215Birth of British film director John Schlessinger, who’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) was kicked to pieces by the critics for being too gay, and by militant gays for not being gay enough.
1926530Birth of George Jorgensen, who went to Denmark for surgery and became Christine Jorgensen, the world’s best-known transsexual
19261015Birth, in Poitiers, France, of philosopher and gay sadomasochist Paul-Michael Foucault. (d. 1984)
1926The German physician Albert Moll organizes the A1. International Conference on Sex Research in Berlin.
1926Birth of erotic Artist Eric Stanton in New York. Stanton was also known as Savage and John Bee. (GHardy)
1926The Bavarian tailor, Johann Klepper, invents the so-called “Klepperbatist”, a fabric impregnated with rubber. The Kleppermantel (Klepper coat), which was made of this material, soon became a popular fetish. After the disappearance of the gummed Klepper fabric in the seventies, the fetishism for Klepper coats slowly dies out too. The last Klepper coat was produced in 1988. (DACHS Timeline)
1926The French publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert is born in Paris. He later publishes award winning biographies of de Sade and various other works of de Sade and also Historie d’O (Story of O) by Reage. (DACHS Timeline)
1927Publication of Secret Memoirs of Gallant Men and Fair Women formerly Casanova Jr’s Tales by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch.
1927Sepernts MC Winter Field Meet
1928Publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence in France. Banned in Britain, it is only in 1960 that a British court declares the book to be art not porn.
1928Publication of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Calling for the American toleration of inverts, it became the best-known book in English with a lesbian theme.
1929112The publishers of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness are served with a summons in an effort to censor the lesbian novel.
1929826Birth in Chicago of Chuck Renslow, who with his partner Dom “Etienne” Orejudos, was to father Kris Studios, The Gold Coast, Man’s Country, International Mr. Leather, and other enterprises. More Recently Chuck has been instrumental in founding The Leather Archives & Museum and the Chicago Eagle.
1929829Birth of English born American poet Thom Gunn.
1929Publication of De Sade by Fortune Press.
1929France Publishing Company - Librarie Generale - published from 1929 till 1934, particularly those written by Alan Mac Clyde, provided exemplary examples of sadomasochism. (Robert Bienvenu)
1929The French judge Rene Guyon starts work in Thailand on his Studies in Sexual Ethics, claiming that an individual has a right to free sexual expression as long as the rights of others are not harmed
1930Publication of Curiosa Flagellants.
1930Publication of Studies about Authority and Family by the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. In the chapter “The Authoritative-Masochist Mindset”, Fromm describes masochism as “special case of a much more common mental mindset”. Masochism is said to be always correlated with sadism. Masochism softens fears by leaning against a mightier power and the absorption in this power. In an authoritative society, the sadomasochistic character structure is produced by the economic structure. Such a sadomasochistic mindset would only be able to overcome in a society that was free from inner contradictions. Moreover “sadomasochism is usually accompanied by a relative weakness of heterosexual genitality: the structure of the sadomasochistic drive correlates with homosexuality in yet unclear ways. (DACHS Timeline)
1930Publication of The Story of Punishment, Man’s Inhumanity to Man by Harry Elmer Barnes. Revised edition 1972.
19305,000 erotic books and circulars are burned. Book burnings become common. The U.S. Post Office is given the power to administer criminal penalties for obscenity violations. (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1930Charles Guyette, though little is known about the man himself, was the key producer of erotica in the U.S. in the 1930’s. Guyette produced SM and fetish paraphernalia and photography and was a central figure in the mid-century practitioner networks. Connected to Guyette was a geographical social circle composed of amateur erotica producers and SM/fetish practitioner network in the U.S.

During the 30’s and 40’s, key producers of American Fetishistic erotica, both underground and mainstream were linked directly and indirectly to the social circles surrounding Guyette.

Prior to entering the SM/Fetish market, Guyette had a background in burlesque theatrical supplies. In the early 30’s,he and his brother operated a store in New York at 116 E. 11th Street and sold costumes and shoes. He was the main supplier of “strip tease” accessories before the war (1939) and was known as the “G” string King. (Robert Bienvenu)
1930Marlene Dietrich, in the film Morocco, makes the first of her many male impersonations.
1930The Austrian psychiatrist, Alfred Adler” writes: “the degeneration of sadomasochism belongs to the most abominable disorientations. And only the medical duty can overcome the disgust and stay just and objective in its listening to the often most abhorrent situations that the human mind can contrive.” (DACHS Timeline)
1930France: Diana Slip sold books and fetishistic clothing including photography by Studio Biederer and books by publishers such as Select Bibliotheque. They provided magnificent catalogs of their products. Diana Slip was part of a conglomeration of several companies. Founded in the 1930’s, Les Editions Gauloise. . (Robert Bienvenu)

In 1936 the group became Les Librairies Nouvelles, a network of bookstores, shops, press groups, papers and studios, grouped into one firm and Diana Slip was one of these companies and was able to draw the greater resources of Les Librairies Nouvelles in its marketing and distribution. . (Robert Bienvenu)

Diana Slip, like Yva Richards, experienced a final decline during World War II and was gone by the end of the war. (Robert Bienvenu)
193128The birth, in Marion, Indiana, of James Dean. The mysterious masochist and cultural icon did nothing in his life to dispel the rumors of his masochism (preferring, it is said, to be burned with cigarettes and to be kicked and stepped on) and the rumors became legends after his death in a car crash on Sept. 30, 1955.
19311128The graphic artist, Jean Thomas Ungerer, better known as Tomi Ungerer, is born in Strasbourg. Ungerer’s works for adults include a large number of S&M drawings. In 1986, he writes and illustrates a book about dominatrixes. (DACHS Timeline)
1932Publication of Erziehungs-Flagellantismus.
1932John Coutts entered the fetish network when he wanders into the MacNaught Shoe Store in Sydney, Australia. MacNaught was a producer of fetishistic high heeled shoes that contributed photographs and advertised in London Life Magazine.

Coutts was shown copies of London Life for the first time. Mr. W. of MacNaught placed Coutts in contact with a retired mariner in Sydney who sold high heeled shoes using the trade name and pseudonym of “Achilles”. Achilles was a seller of High heel shoes who regularly corresponded and advertised in London Life magazine. Coutts visited Achilles and the two became friends.Achilles placed Coutts in contact with the American Social Circle surrounding Charles Guyette. Achilles gave Coutts the name and address of John Bringman, Guyette’s Photographer. (Robert Bienvenu)
193356In Berlin Nazis ransack Magnus Hierschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research and, on May 11, burn his library and museum collection which, Christopher Isherwood reported, included many SM implements.
193371Birth of Domingo “Dom” Orejudos, better known as the erotic artists Etienne and Stephen, and as partner with Chuck Renslow in operation of Kris Studio, the Publication of Mars and Rawhide magazines, the Gold Coast leather bar and Man’s Country baths in Chicago, and the founding of the International Mr. Leather contest.
1933715The Italian architect and comic artist Guido Crepax is born in Milan. Influenced by John Willie, he later adopts Justine and in several parts, The Story of O as comic. (DACHS Timeline)
1933Publication of Guirlande de Priape
1933Publication of The Strap Returns, New Notes on Flagellation. It is privately printed by Gargoyle (GHardy)
1933Publication of the first American Edition of The Pearl.
1933Birth, in New South Wales, Australia, of artist Nigel Kent. When he started drawing and painting male SM imagery he signed his work James D. but later began using his real name. He has lived in the Netherlands since 1973.
1933Earliest evidence of Charles Guyette’s activity is in 1933 when he writes to the editor of London Life that was published on February 25, 1933 and was a regular advertiser in London Life in 1934 and 1935. (Robert Bienvenu)
1934310The birth in El Paso, Texas, of author John Rechy, whose writing skirted the edges of leather sexuality, and about which he had strong opinions.
1934Publication in England of The History of Torture in England by L. A. Parry.
1934Publication of Magica Sexualis by Falstaff Press
1935223Coutts’ first published works appear in London Life magazine. Coutts also contributed to other Men’s Magazines such as Flirt and Wink. (Robert Bienvenu)
19358Charles Guyette serves one year in prison and upon his release in August of 1936, changed his mode of operation and went underground instead of publicly (mail order and over the counter sales) (Robert Bienvenu)
19358Guyette’s business activities come to an abrupt halt when he was indicted and pled guilty to two charges of depositing in the mail, “certain non-mailable matter, to wit, certain obscene and lewd pictures”. Sentenced to one year and one day in the federal penitentiary in Lewisburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was delivered on September 6, 1935. He returned to his business after his release, but evidently quite sensitive to publicity. (Robert Bienvenu)
1935Publication of Spanker by the Duchess of Pain
1936The American housewife Dorothy Spencer publicizes a scheme to improve marriage by mutual domestic spanking.
1936The suicide of Robert Ervin Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian. Exceptionally close to his mother as a boy, and bullied by older boys he turned to exercise and developed the body he admired in other men. When his mother lapsed into a coma he blew out his own brains with a borrowed pistol and in Cross Plains, Texas, they had a double funeral. He was 30 years old and had written 21 Conan stories in which images of muscular men suffering under the domination of others was prominent.
1937Publication of Unique Experiences of Flossa by Clacker Press in New York
1937For the first time in the United States, flagellation books are seen as obscene and fall under the ever-watchful eye of the Comstock law, and Sumner.

Up until the mid-30s flagellation novels were not considered obscene and were in fact sold openly. This ended, however, when John Sumner writes his annual report to constituents: “Other books which occupied our attention during the year included paper covered volumes on the subject of flagellation. The illustrations and text tended and were intended solely to appeal to a perverted sex sense. Books of this type might very well arouse sex excitement in a person of unbalanced mind, leading to vicious anti-social acts.” (http://www.eroticabibliophile.com/censorship_history.html)
1937The Library of Congress print of this bizarre, apparently hybrid film clocks in at 45 minutes, Cobbled together from what appears to be three or possibly four different pieces of footage, The Penitente Murder Case (as the LC print is titled) outlines in bare detail the journey of a newspaperman into the barrens of New Mexico, where he stumbles upon a hardcore Catholic sect of peons who practice bizarre rites of self-flagellation. He hooks up with a cooperative local 'boy', Chico, who escorts him, unseen, to a number of secret rituals. At the end of the film the reporter is murdered so that the 'secret' of the sect stays within the local community. The distinct sets of celluloid include some apparently silent footage, which appears to be real, of New Mexicans performing their Good Friday ceremonies (these segments were clearly shot at 16FPS); extremely bad hand held footage with enough pan shots to give anyone a headache; incredibly dull footage of the reporter and Chico standing around 'watching' the natives; and some very fine dramatic footage that is clearly staged--especially good is the circular shot of the police interrogation at the end of the film. Credited director-cinematographer Roland Price was probably responsible for the character shots, but I can't imagine the man who also shot Marihuana: Weed With Roots In Hell and Son of Ingagi being capable of the 8 or so competent minutes in this film. Penitentes was apparently butchered by the Hays Office, but the extant footage is still pretty strong stuff, as the film features whipping, nudity, and crucifixion. Narrator Zelma Carroll flubs several lines and sounds like he was given a single take to record his unctuous overdubs. He also sounds like he was well lubricated for the task at hand.
1938Irving Klaw opens a book and photo store and soon afterwards focused his product line on photographs. Through 1946 his photos were principally conventional cheesecake and did not include SM and kinky images. (Robert Bienvenu)
1938The American zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey begins his studies on human sexual behavior, using empirical data from over 12,000 interviews.
1939110Birth of actor Sal Mineo. He wore the leather jacket in Rebel Without a Cause even though he was the obvious and willing bottom to James Dean’s reluctant Top. His gristly 1976 murder has never been solved.
1939Publication of Deutfche Leibeszucht (GHardy)
1939Publication of Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von Krafft Ebing. It was published by Pioneer Publishing.
1939Publication of Police Gazette
1939In the film Bringing up Baby, Cary Grant, appearing in a dress, exclaims that he has gone gay. Historian John Boswell credits this as the first public use of the term in the US, outside of pornography and the homosexual community. But it isn”t until the 1970’s that gay is widely accepted as the standard, nonslang synonym for homosexual, and not until 1987 that it is accepted by the New York Times.
1939Second World War: In the brothels of the German Wehrmacht (army), it is strictly forbidden to possess or to use sadomasochistic tools. (DACHS Timeline)