18th century Britain was kinky.

Hellfire holidays: Round 2 of the Pervert's Grand Tour. (1) - By Tony Perrottet - Slate Magazine:

"A couple of years ago, while researching a treatise on salacious European history, I discovered the phantasmagoric wonderland of sex that was Georgian Britain, the era from 1714 to 1837. Long before the heyday of Austin Powers, debauchery proliferated up and down the rain-soaked land, fueled by riotous boozing and self-indulgence. "There was a gusto about 18^th century vice unmatched before or since," writes historian Fergus Linnane with tangible nostalgia, in London: The Wicked City. A flood of wealth from the budding empire allowed the leisured classes to fulfill their carnal fantasies without restraint. And perhaps the most striking feature of the age was the explosion of British sex clubs, where a colorful array of rakes, libertines, courtesans, and aristocratic adventuresses dressed up in outrageous outfits for kinky ceremonies. Each club accumulated its own peculiar regalia, such as erotic drinking vessels, sleazy curios, and obscene ballot boxes modeled on human torsos (yay or nay votes going into respective orifices). There would be ribald toasts, poring over the latest dirty books, and visits from comely young "posture molls," who posed nude on tables and gyrated like modern lap dancers. Special rooms were provided so members could retire in pairs or groups, and ladies of fashion could unwind with handsome rent boys. Surviving accounts suggest that some clubs would spice their orgies with a dash of Satanism, while others focused on elaborate rituals of self-abuse.

Sadly, during the prudish Victorian era, most references to these naughty clubs were scotched from the historical record. Horrified relatives burned embarrassing documents and club regalia. But their subversive antics survived in pornographic novels, travel guides to risqué tourist sites, and, of course, popular memory...

Visiting the city today, you must constantly look past all the ponderous Victorian institutions that smothered the world of whimsical sex romps. No trace can be found of the Mollies Club for homosexuals, the range of transvestite societies (both men and women relished gender-bending in the 18^th century), the Flagellants' Club for the many gentlemen who favored a little birching, or the women-only club for discreet lesbian encounters on Jermyn Street. A creative leap of imagination is needed to picture Covent Garden, now given over to flower markets and Body Shops, as the city's most sordid red light district, where, in the seedy Shakespeare's Head, waiter-pimps would set gentlemen up with ladies like Oyster Moll, who would "open the wicket of love's bear garden to any bold sportsman who has a venturesome mind to give a run to his puppy." And in tree-lined St. James's Square, nothing remains of upmarket bordellos like Miss Falkland's Temple of Love, where one could sip champagne in damask-lined parlors and enjoy such luxuries as "elastick beds" that were spring-loaded "to restore old men and debauched youths," much like the vibrating mattresses of Las Vegas hotels, and where resident doctors who would screen ladies for the pox.

...In 1721, rumors began circulating throughout the city about a new group that called themselves the Hellfire Club, some 40 "persons of quality," male and female, led by a handsome and depraved young peer, Philip, Duke of Wharton. Along with the group sex and sadomasochism, there was talk of sacrilegious rites in their townhouses—mockeries of the Holy Eucharist, feasts of Devil's Loins and Holy Ghost Pie—so the club was shut down by royal order.

...In 1750, Dashwood gathered his friends and concocted a fake religious sect, renovated the abandoned medieval abbey of Medmenham near his family estate, and began to use it as a private rumpus room for carnal misbehavior. In this isolated setting, beneath old stained-glass windows and new erotic frescos, a dozen randy "apostles" would gather in monks robes for twice-weekly bacchanals. Aristocratic women would travel from London to join the frolics dressed as nuns, and comely local "nymphs" were hired, allegedly to lie naked on his altar so the monks could lick holy wine from their navels—an exciting aperitif before the real festivities began. To crank up the eerie atmosphere, revelries were also held inside purpose-built caves dug on Dashwood's estate, in torch-lit chambers that evoked the pagan catacombs of ancient Rome.

What exactly transpired in these inventive club settings has been a matter of feverish speculation by historians ever since, with rumors of sacrilegious sex games, pagan fertility rituals, and, of course, a spicy dash of Satanism. We do know that club members included high-level figures from the British government, including the Earl of Sandwich and radical John Wilkes, plus celebrities like the writer Laurence Sterne, artist William Hogarth, and Benjamin Franklin, who became Dashwood's close friend."