Between 1885 and 1960, laws and policies designed to repress prostitution dramatically shaped London's commercial sex industry. This book examines how laws translated into street-level reality, explores how women who sold sex experienced criminalization, and charts the complex dimensions of the underground sexual economy in the modern metropolis.

JULIA LAITE Lecturer in Modern British History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She has published several articles on prostitution in Britain and is presently researching women's migration, sexual labour, and human trafficking in the twentieth century world.