These historical mugshots showcase women who were arrested for prostitution and madams that ran brothels – a common seedy practice in Montreal in the 1940s.
These are the faces of Montreal’s seedy 20th-century red-light district when the Canadian city was known as the sex capital of North America. The city became known as a den of iniquity shortly after the First World War when the introduction of prohibition in the United States sent people over the border in search of a drink and a good time.