Were the s*x toys in Netflix’s Monster real? The truth about the Veedee and Chattanooga

Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story has arrived. This time around, things get particularly weird because the show features not one, but two extremely bizarre 19th-century sex toys: The Veedee vibrator and the Chattanooga.

Via Netflix

Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan is one of the characters who has been heavily reimagined by Ryan Murphy. Rather than simply being an Irish live-in maid, Bridget arrives at the Borden household as a mysterious and worldly figure, and apparently brings a wooden vibrator with her.

So, were these bizarre gadgets actually real, or has Monster completely made them up?

The Veedee first appears in episode one, when Bridget introduces Lizzie to it as a way of dealing with her severe period pain.

According to the story Bridget tells, her former mistress also suffered from “heavy menses” and was prescribed something called “hysterical paroxysm”, aka an orgasm. Bridget then shows Lizzie how to use the device, telling her: “You hold it up on your cunny and you turn this. You crank it like you beat eggs.”

Via Netflix

There really was a Veedee vibratory massager, with an example now held by the Science Museum Group. Its collection dates one model to between 1900 and 1915, while the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow has one from around 1903.

It came in a box and had various attachments, and it was sold as a therapeutic device rather than advertised as a sex toy. The accompanying instructions claimed it could provide “curative vibration, vibratory massage, nerve stimulation and blood circulation”. The Royal College’s records say the Veedee was promoted for an enormous list of complaints, including colds, headaches, digestive problems and hysteria.

The second bizarre device appears in episode two, and somehow has an even stranger name: The Chattanooga.

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Bridget believes Lizzie’s hymen completely covers the vaginal opening, and orders her a Chattanooga, which is presented as a “medical massager” supposedly used by doctors.

Via Netflix

Historical research describes the Chattanooga as one of the most expensive medical vibrators available to doctors in the early 1900s. In 1904, it reportedly cost $200 plus freight. It was a huge machine weighing around 125lb, with a wheeled stand that allowed it to be moved around a doctor’s office. This thing was basically medical machinery.

The Wellcome Collection has surviving advertising material from the Vibrator Instrument Company dating to 1902 and 1903. The company’s literature promoted the Chattanooga as a therapeutic device and claimed vibration could be used to treat conditions ranging from gastric problems and constipation to deafness and other ailments.

Via Netflix

There were also multiple different attachments and forms of vibratory equipment available to doctors at the time.

The machines are rooted in real medical history, but their appearance in the Borden story is another example of the series using real historical details and moving them around to tell a much more sensational story.

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Featured image via Netflix