Tag Archives: sex work

Canadian History Shows that Sex Workers Usually Get the Short End of the Stick

Margaret Ross Late one evening in January 1923, police descended on Millie Jones’s bawdy house at 757 Mercer Street in Windsor, Ontario. She was forty-eight years old, and ran the house with her husband, George.[1] The couple was Black, and they employed two other Black women. The entire group was arrested, including two clients who were being entertained at the… Read more »

The Madam Who Shot the Mountie: How a brothel-keeper in 1880s Edmonton crossed the law – and won

By Laurie Bertram This piece was first published in the University of Toronto Magazine.  On May 23, 1889, a packed courtroom in Edmonton watched as “Big Nelly” Webb, the most famous woman in town, answered to the charge of shooting a member of the North West Mounted Police. Several months earlier, Constable Thomas Cairney had been found seriously wounded on… Read more »