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Dance Halls of Early Victoria,
1859-1866
 
 
 
Brothels and Street Walkers

It is, of course, not the case that all the Native women working as prostitutes in Victoria were employed in dance houses.  Evidence suggests that many Native prostitutes worked the streets, or owned or were employed in brothels. 

On the Streets

In May 1860, the British Colonist reported the arrest of six “squaws belonging to the northern tribes”.*  The mildness of these women's sentence—a night in jail, and “a warning that if caught again in the streets after dark they would be punished,”* suggests that the police were used to dealing with Native street walkers. 

In Brothels

In June 1876, the Colonist reported on the trial of a man caught supplying liquor to two Native women, a mother and daughter, who apparently ran a brothel.  Within the article, the judge overseeing the trial comments on the abundance of brothels in the city: 
            In this town there were houses of ill fame occupied by white, Chinese and Indian prostitutes, and in no city in any part of the world was the nefarious traffic carried on in such an open manner as here.  The case the Court had just heard was one in which both the mother and the daughter could be sentenced under the Vagrancy Act to six months' hard labour each, as it was evident they were common prostitutes.*

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