A long, long time ago in this subreddit, I managed to find a topic on sexual attitudes/pornography during the victorian era, where an answerer reported a dearth of BDSM clubs or other related sexually fetishistic gatherings. Unfortunately, a cursory google search reveals nothing but questionable and unsourced answers. Is there any actual evidence of an explosion of BDSM in this era, or is it merely a reflection of modern tastes affecting our understanding of the past?
Hurt, and be hurt, and, at the same time, experience the exquisite pain of orgasm until the pain becomes one great climax, or the sight of pain inflicted grows into the organs.
-- Marquis de Sade (1740–1814)
please note there are graphic descriptions of sex and corporal abuse below
In answering this question we very rapidly get into how slippery the notions of sexuality--especially fetishes--can be in previous eras. Christian flagellants whipped themselves through the streets as a way of doing penance for their societies sins during the Black Death. Is this humiliation play? Public sex fetishism? Proto-BDSM? I think every scholar of Christianity and even of flagellants will thank me when i say it's pretty clearly not proto-BDSM.
So what is BDSM? I mean, if we just want to start with the term itself it's basically impossible for it to have existed in the Victorian era, as the term was coined in 1991 on Usenet [OED]. Or, if we just want to get into the component parts, what you seem to be referencing is an erotic practice that would be very close to S&M (Sadomasochism). The term is most obviously derived from a portmanteau combining the names of the Marquis de (Sade) and Leopold von Sacher-(Masoch). These terms are also non-victorian--the German sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced them into medical terminology in his work Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Psychopathia sexualis ("New research in the Psychopathology of Sex") in 1890. As many people have discussed elsewhere on AskHistorians, we cannot assign sexuality (or even sexual roles like homo/heterosexual) to figures in the past. However, as many queer theorists have done, we can examine things like same-sex desire or even foot fetishism or BDSM-type things by figures in the past.
And in doing so, we find that there was a lot of BDSM-type activities in England, especially in Victorian England. Indeed, gentlemen getting beaten by women was seen as so common by French prostitutes that corporal punishment was known as "the englishman's vice." Why? The entire history of why corporal punishment was so heavily practiced in England is a story for another day, but needless to say, there was a long-standing English belief in Proverb 13:24: "he who spares the rod hates his child, but he who loves the child is careful to discipline him." Spare the rod and spoil the child became the code phrase for a lot of English educational philosophy. A selection from the Victorian era: in 1810 "the rod is the ordinance of god; in 1830s "if encouragement will not do, correction must be used"; and honestly lots and lots of sources before that. The use of corporal punishment in English schools was especially noted by visitors and contemporaries.
So the practice of corporal punishment obviously goes far back in England--but that's not exactly BDSM either, is it? No, but the turn towards adult BDSM sort of behavior comes (most likely) from the widespread use of corporal punishment on schoolchildren--there are a number of accounts that describe children (usually young boys) becoming aroused by the first time of being beaten by a maid, schoolmarm, or another figure. This is recounted in a number of diaries--Rousseau of course being the most famous, but there are others. In erotic flagellation pornography it is almost de-rigeur. As we can see from The Romance of Lust:
Holding me firmly with her left arm, Miss Evelyn used the rod most unmercifully. At first, the pain was excruciating, and I roared out as loud as I could, but gradually the pain ceased to be so acute, and was succeeded by the most delicious tickling sensation. My struggles at first had been so violent as to greatly disorder Miss Evelyn's petticoats, and to raise them up so as to expose to my delighted eyes her beautifully formed silk-clad legs up to the knees, and even an inch or two of naked thigh above.
This, together with the intense tickling irritation communicated to my bottom, as well as to the friction of my cock against the person of Miss Evelyn in my struggles, rendered me almost delirious, and I tossed and pushed myself about on her knees in a state of perfect frenzy as the blows continued to be showered down upon my poor bottom. At last the rod was worn to a stump, and I was pushed off her knees. As I rose before her, with my cheeks streaming with tears, my shirt was jutting out considerably in front in an unmistakeable and most prominent manner, and my prick was at the same time throbbing beneath it with convulsive jerks, which I could by no means restrain.
Miss Evelyn glared at the projection in marked astonishment, and her open eyes were fixed upon it as I stood rubbing my bottom and crying, without attempting to move or button up my trousers. She continued for a minute or two to stare at the object of attraction, flushing scarlet up to the forehead, and the she suddenly seemed to recollect herself, drew a heavy breath, and rapidly left room. She did not return until after my sisters came back from the garden, and seemed still confused, and avoided fixing her eye upon me.
Or from Lady Pokingham
Miss BIRCH, looking seriously round as she flourished the rod.—"Now, all you young ladies, let this whipping be a caution to you; my Lady Beatrice richly deserves this degrading shame, for her indecent (I ought to call them obscure) sketches. Will you! will you, you troublesome, impudent little thing, ever do so again? There, there, there, I hope it will soon do you good. Ah! you may scream; there's a few more to come yet."
The bunch of birch seemed to crash on my bare bottom with awful force; the tender skin smarted, and seemed ready to burst at every fresh cut. "Ah! ah! oh!!! Oh, heavens! have mercy, madame. Oh! I will never do anything like it again. Ah—r—re! I can't bear it!" I screamed, kicking and struggling under every blow, so that at first they could scarcely hold me, but I was soon exhausted by my own efforts.
Miss BIRCH.—"You can feel it a little, may it do you good, you bad little girl; if I don't check you now, the whole establishment would soon be demoralized. Ah! ha! your bottom is getting finely wealed, but I haven't done yet," cutting away with increasing fury.
Just then I caught a glimpse of her face, which was usually pale, but now flushed with excitement, and her eyes sparkled with unwonted animation. "Ah!" she continued, "young ladies beware of my rod, when I do have to use it. How do you like it, Lady Beatrice? Let us all know how nice it is," cutting my bottom and thighs deliberately at each ejaculation.
LADY BEATRICE.—"Ah! oh! ah—r—r—re! It's awful! Oh I shall die if you don't have mercy, Miss Birch. Oh! my God, I'm fearfully punished; I'm cut to pieces; the birch feels as if it was red hot, the blows burn so!"
Then I felt as if it was all over, and I must die soon; my cries were succeeded by low sobs, moans, and then hysterical crying, which gradually got lower and lower, till at last I must have fainted, as I remembered nothing more till I found myself in bed, and awoke with my poor posteriors tremendously bruised and sore, and it was nearly a fortnight before I got rid of all the marks of that severe whipping.
Furthermore, it seems to have been discussed in english proto-erotic fiction, such as Edmund Curll's infamous translation of A treatise of the use of flogging in venereal affairs : also of the office of the loins and reins (source here) which detailed all sorts of ways that whipping could be used to "encourage the staff to stand." (Sidebar: when Curll was arrested for this publication He pleaded not guilty, arguing that it was was a 'medical text' and therefore not subject to the usual standards of propriety--this did not proof to be persuasive to the judges). By the time the Victorian era rolls around, flagellation literature has taken on it's own huge genre, with members of the Cannibal Club publishing all sorts of specifically flagellation literature, such as the Whippingham Papers or The Mysteries of Verbena House.
First of all, erotic flagellation and related activities were not exclusively 19th century or British. There are many references to voluntary erotic flagellation in the 1600s and 1700s. E.g.:
The apparent boom in BDSM-like activities in the Victorian Era is because of a few reasons:
I recommend reading Ian Gibson's The English Vice for an in-depth look on the English history of flagellation, and my own recently published book, A Lover's Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism.