None of them were what I expected. American gangster movies of the period always portrayed prostitutes as high-living Flapper-types (above). After seeing Jorge's pictures I'm wondering if that image was exaggerated. I don't see any Flappers here.
So was this woman (above).
And so was this woman (above). Yikes! Two of these women managers were pretty mean-looking. I wonder if that's because some of their employees were virtual slaves. I don't know if that's the case...I'm just guessing.
Some of the women (above) who were mere sex workers in those houses looked pretty mean themselves.
Maybe they were madams in training. They look hard as nails.
Some of the workers looked tragic, as if nothing good ever happened to them in their entire lives.
By the 1940s the women (above) in the mugshots looked more normal...well, sort of.
What were women in that line of work like before the 1920s? I'm not sure, but this mugshot (above) from 1920s Australia might contain a clue.
BTW: Most of these pictures were derived from a site called "vintage everyday," 1/26/2014