The UK Fetish Archive reveals its secrets

A golden, erect penis-shaped trophy decorated with wings isn’t an object you might expect to find in a conventional archive. The UK Fetish Archive, though, is anything but conventional.

The trophy belongs to dominatrix Eva Oh, commemorating her as Sex Worker of the Year at the 2022 Sexual Freedom Awards. It’s one of several items that Oh has contributed to the UK Fetish Archive, with other material including her script from a 2023 Erika Lust porn film, posters and lanyards from the 2020 German Fetish Ball, and a portrait of her illustrated the Femdom artist Sardax. “I saw little bits of history when I came across them [in the archive], and I realised some of the things I had could add to that,” says Oh, as we sit in the wood-panelled library of Bishopsgate Institute where the archive is based, her trophy resting beside us. “There’s a lot of contemporary approaches to sexuality here, among our ancestors.”

Housed in London's Bishopsgate Institute, a Grade II listed Victorian-era building and cultural centre opposite Liverpool Street Station, the UK Fetish Archive documents and provides open access to the history of fetish, kink and BDSM, with its earliest items dating back to the 1850s and 1860s. Whether it’s clothing, photographs, magazines or more, the archive’s goal is to preserve and celebrate kink and fetish history.

“I don’t want to say that what we’re doing here is unique, but I don’t think there’s anywhere that’s embracing the whole gamut of fetish sexuality in the way we are, from the angle that we are,” says Stefan Dickers, Special Collections and Archives Manager at Bishopsgate Institute. There are around 70 dedicated collections, including Eva’s, that comprise the overall archive, with thousands of books, pamphlets and magazines. These numbers are growing rapidly given that everyone is welcome and encouraged to contribute material.  

Bishopsgate Institute and its archives first opened to the public in 1895, to provide a space for people living and working in the City of London. Still free to visit, without any need to register or provide ID, the archives hold material on radical and working-class history, feminist and women’s history, protest and campaigning, and more.

Starting an archive dedicated to celebrating fetish and kink was always on Dickers’ mind. He joined Bishopsgate Institute in 2005, and six years later, the Institute received the Lesbian and Gay News Media Archive, which has since grown to become one of the most extensive collections on LGBTQ+ history in the UK. In 2016, Dickers received a call from the Birmingham-based organiser of Midland Link Motor Sports Club, a leather club for gay and bisexual men, looking for a place to store ephemera and leaflets related to the club. Dickers agreed to house the material at Bishopsgate Institute. Word spread quickly, and soon after, leather fetish clubs across the country began contacting the Institute.

“It was quite amazing because there was obviously a real passion for this history to be recorded, and I think there were doubts it was going to be recorded. So when we did it, there was a real wonderful sense of goodwill,” says Dickers.

Since then, the archive, and interest in it, has taken off more than Dickers anticipated, with donations continuing to pour in from across the UK and internationally. Other collections include material from Miss Kim, who ran a London fetish night from 1996 to 2017 called Club Rub and the archives of Skin Two, a fetish magazine founded in the 1980s, as well as more recent material including photography from London-based lovers and photographers The London Vagabond.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere that’s embracing the whole gamut of fetish sexuality in the way we are, from the angle that we are” – Stefan Dickers

Crucially, Dickers says, the archives provide a view into the present as much as the past. “My passion has always been that the archive is embedded in the current, not only because it’s great fun, but also because we need to record what’s going on now.” He points to how history has repeated itself in different ways, with records in the archives showing how different clubs were raided – a forerunner of more recent battles between kink clubs and London councils.

The archives also create a space for people to feel less alone, and importantly, less shame about their own kinks and fetishes, says Dickers. Given the historical context of how different kinks and fetishes have been policed, criminalised, or have carried social stigma, the archive’s existence shows that there’s a long history of this culture existing, and that it is worthy of documentation. “It’s a repository for our memories, our history, our journey,” says Brew Hunter, a longstanding member of the leather fetish community who hosted a night called Mastery at The Backstreet, London’s longest-running, men-only leather bar which closed in 2022.

In search of a new space to gather with others after the bar’s closure and post-COVID lockdown, Hunter hosted two events at Bishopsgate Institute in 2023 to celebrate The Backstreet’s legacy. “It’s been extraordinarily meaningful because it validates not just what we do, but what we feel,” he says. “I think it's interesting that society is now slowly accepting sexuality in all its myriad forms, and that has got to be held somewhere, and that is here.”

While archives more generally have tended to view fetish and sexuality from an academic or often medicalised perspective, Dickers says the fetish archives at Bishopsgate Institute present something different. “Here, it’s a celebration of these histories and the amazing people that have been on the scene over the years.” They also act as inspiration, drawing interested parties on a daily basis, including researchers, art students, tattooists and even Alexander McQueen’s leather department.

Of course, there are some logistical challenges to storing and preserving equipment related to fetish equipment, such as latex and rubber, which Dickers and his team mostly conserve in-house but occasionally seek specialist external skills. And there’s the question of space too. “We’ve not had any major issues with major deposits of big dungeon furniture yet, but I’m a bit worried that at some point, this is going to happen,” says Dickers.

Over the coming years, Dickers’ main goal is to continue expanding the archive, with future ambitions for a public exhibition to share more of these hidden histories with more audiences. He’s also looking to collect more oral histories for the archive, to record people’s memories and stories where they may not have the objects and material.

As kink and fetish culture and communities have become more visible in recent years due to the connections social media has provided, the Institute and its archives are a reminder that these spaces have always existed in some way – and will continue to do so.

“I think it’s important and empowering for kinky people to have a place where they can see other kinky people and that there have always been kinky people, and that they’re not strange or weird or anything,” says Dickers. “In fact, they’re part of a lineage of something quite incredible.”