So were prostitutes more than a century ago

Discrimination against sex workers dates from our most immediate past to the present. We have already talked about them many times and all the problems they have to face. Dedicating yourself to the pornographic spectacle in the modern world implies a stigma for those who practice it. Beyond the embarrassment that it can cause in your closest circle and having to face the family environment, there is a real persecution of those who want to make a living recording movies or doing photo shoots without clothes.

Pornography was born, like the rest of the arts and shows, on horseback with technical advances. In 1839 Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a step prior to photography as we know it today. This invention would soon become the optimal tool for creating pornographic products until 1846, the date on which the oldest erotic image in the world appeared, showing a man inserting his member inside a woman's vagina. Both look quite serious and at that time the actors did not have many notions of interpretation.

Most of them presented threadbare clothes and faces deformed by beatings due to police torture after being arrested

As early as 1896, French filmmakers began to experiment and explore the erotic possibilities of the medium with silent shorts, such as the famous "Le Coucher de la Marie", in which a woman takes off her clothes for the first time in front of a camera. From there, the fever for filming nudes spreads like wildfire and continues to this day. The British newspaper 'Swns' has brought to light in recent days the harrowing stories behind Britain's first convicted sex workers. These are young women who were arrested over a century ago and whose black and white photographic shots were unearthed from the West Midlands Region Police archives.

Birmingham police were the first law enforcement in the world to catalog and open police files on these women as "criminals." This happened in 1853. The images shown below were taken between 1908 and 1911. Most of these women presented threadbare clothes and faces deformed by the beatings due to the torture that the agents had to subject them to when they were arrested. .

He was only 15 years old. Edith Bird was one of the first prostitutes to be arrested. It happened in 1908 and, being just a girl, she was accused of "prostitution" and sentenced to pay a fine. But not only this, since from her face, her eyebrows and swollen chin, we can deduce that she was also severely punished.

Something similar happened to Agnes Halker, much older than the previous one: 52 years old. Also known at the time as "The Old Witch", she was accused of "running a brothel" and sentenced to three months in prison in 1912. She A former 'madame' who emerges from the past.

This is Annie Laurie, 28, who, like Halker, was charged with running and operating a brothel. She too was convicted and the photograph of her emerges from the darkness of the past to show the world the persecution she had to go through for opposing the fine morals of the time. She was stopped while she was going to the studio where the photos were taken, which is why she was so well dressed in this white dress of the time.

"Life in Birmingham during the Victorian era was really tough," says Corinne Brazer, the person in possession of these images. "Many women turned to drink as a form of escapism and later to prostitution to continue feeding and indulging in the habit. In the city, opportunities to work were quite scarce. You have to keep in mind that all this happened before the when modern medicine and the National Health Service came along, the life expectancy of these women was much lower than it is today," says Brazer.

"Some of the young women thought that this was the only way to make a living or to survive. The older ones possibly managed to dedicate their whole life to it life. People back then would have been living off the checks their clients handed them. Likewise, many of them probably had husbands or children, so they needed a way to pay their bills, feed themselves, and live," Corinne concludes. Brazer.