Prostitution in Ireland is legal. However, since March 2017, it has been an offence to buy sex. All forms of third party involvement (such as operating brothels, sex trafficking, and other forms of pimping) are illegal but are commonly practiced. Since the law that criminalises clients came into being, with the purpose of reducing the demand for prostitution, the number of prosecutions for the purchase of sex increased from 10 in 2018 to 92 in 2020. In a report from UCD's Sexual Exploitation Research Programme the development is called ”a promising start in interrupting the demand for prostitution.” Most prostitution in Ireland occurs indoors. Street prostitution has declined considerably in the 21st century, with the vast majority of prostitution now advertised on the internet.
History Eighteenth century
Prostitution was both highly visible and pervasive in 18th-century Dublin, centred on Temple Bar and reflected the whole spectrum of socioeconomic class, from street prostitutes, through organised brothels to high class courtesans, who were often illegitimate daughters of the upper class. A well-known example was Peg Plunkett. The role of the prostitute in 18th-century Ireland was at least partly a product of the double standard of female sexuality. Typical of this was the way that venereal disease was constructed as being spread by prostitutes rather than their largely male clients. Female Irish prostitutes were frequently the victims of violence against women. Early 'rescue' campaigns emerged in this time with Lady Arabella Denny and the Magdalene Asylums. These provided shelter but in return expected menial labour and penitence.
The most famous madam in the Dublin of the 1700s was alleged female serial killer Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly who operated the Maiden Tower kip house on Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street in the southwest part of the city. Convicted of murdering and dismembering shoemaker John Dowling on St. Patrick's Day 1760, Kelly was executed by partial hanging and burning at the stake on Gallows Road (modern Baggot Street) on 7 January 1761. After her execution she was waked by prostitutes on Copper Alley; thirteen of whom were arrested for disorder and sent to Newgate Prison, Dublin.
The Royal Barracks (modern day Collins Barracks) in Dublin was completed in 1702 and Barrack Street, which ran directly in front of it (renamed Benburb Street in 1890), became associated with sex work over the centuries. As with most garrison towns in Ireland, prostitution proliferated in areas surrounding Army barracks, as impoverished Irishwomen gravitated towards military personnel, who were in receipt of a steady income. The area was comparable to the Monto in Dublin, whose sex trade reached its zenith from the 1860s until the 1950s and whose profits were also aided by the large number of troops stationed in the city over the period. In 1837, 135 years after the barracks had been established, Barrack Street was described by a visitor as consisting of "a line of brothels and low public-houses" and "filled with the most abandoned crew of rogues and prostitutes which even all Dublin, with its unhappy pre-eminence in that species of population, can produce". In the late nineteenth century the street was chosen as the location for the first Dublin Corporation housing scheme, due to the cheaper cost of purchasing land in areas with long-standing social problems.
Nineteenth century
Meanwhile, the Wrens of the Curragh, for instance, were a group of Irish sex workers working as camp followers at the Curragh Camp, a military camp in County Kildare. Both Victorian era neo-Puritanism rooted in the rise and growth of a heavily Evangelical middle class and an escalating fear of venereal disease, particularly as a threat to the stability of the armed forces, led to the introduction of a series of Contagious Diseases Acts in the 1860s. These Acts enabled the Irish Constabulary to arrest any woman suspected of prostitution and force her to submit to a medical examination for venereal disease. As in many other countries, opposition to the Acts provided a rallying cry for emerging women's movements. Anna Haslam in Dublin and Isabella Tod in Belfast, both of the Ladies National Association, organised opposition and a recognition not only of the plight of these women but also of the root causes.
One of the most famous male prostitutes in both Ireland and the United Kingdom during the second half of the 1800s was Dublin-born John Saul, also known as Jack Saul, or "Dublin Jack".Chandler, Glenn; The Sins Of Jack Saul, Grosvenor House Publishing, 2016, , p7 He featured in two major homosexual scandals of the time (the Dublin Castle scandal in 1884 and Cleveland Street scandal in 1889), and also featured as a character in two works of pornographic literature of the period. Saul was considered "notorious in Dublin and London" and "made infamous by the sensational testimony he gave in the Cleveland Street scandal",Cohen, A. William Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1996, p123 which was publicised in newspapers around the world. His life and career have been the subject of scholarly analysis and speculation, one reason being the paucity of information on the lives and outlook of individual male prostitutes of the period.Coleman, Jonathan Rent: Same-Sex Prostitution in Modern Britain, 1885–1957, University of Kentucky, 2014, p. 10 Saul referred to himself as "a professional Mary-Ann" – a period euphemism for rentboy, and stated: "I have lost my character and cannot get on otherwise. I occasionally do odd-jobs for different gay people."
Twentieth century During the mid to late 19th century, it has been estimated that 17,000 women were working as prostitutes in Dublin alone, and a further 8 brothels in Cork. Dublin's sex trade was largely centred on the Monto district, reputedly the largest red light district in Europe. A major part of the demand came from the large number of military personnel stationed in Ireland at the time.
In Kevin Kearns' oral history collection Dublin Tenement Life, however, he comments that many of the prostitutes in the Monto had, like Philomena Lee, been unmarried and pregnant and were disowned both by their families and by their babies' fathers. Although middle class and suburban Dubliners viewed them as whores, the impoverished but devoutly Catholic residents of Monto tenements referred to prostitutes as, "unfortunate girls," and understood that they had turned to prostitution as a last resort. According to Kearns, "By all accounts, the girls were typically young, attractive, and known for their generosity, especially to slum children."Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 54.
Billy Dunleavy, reflecting on his youth in the Monto during the Irish War of Independence, described the women involved in prostitution as mostly rural girls who had fallen into hardship after unplanned pregnancies, often abandoned by the fathers. Many spent time in convents where they endured harsh treatment before ending up "on the town". While madams provided them with new clothes to attract clients, the girls faced exploitation and control, including being stripped of their clothes if they withheld money. Despite the stigma, Dunleavy recalled them as kind and respectable, often friendly with local residents.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Pages 85–86.
Kearns notes that the madams were savvy Dublin women who operated their brothels with strict authority. They profited significantly, some becoming wealthy and socially mobile, while exerting control over their workers’ movements and finances. Many brothels also sold alcohol illegally to increase profits. Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 55.
Dunleavy also recounted the grim reality faced by women suffering from venereal diseases, particularly syphilis. He alleged that at the Lock Hospital on Townsend Street, some women were euthanised when their condition was incurable, due to the absence of effective medical treatment at the time. Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 86.
Post-Independence (1921 onwards) Demise of the Monto
Between 1921 and 1925, Frank Duff, the founder of the Legion of Mary and Fr. R.S. Devane, who both called for the social purification of Irish culture, launched a campaign to close down the kip-houses and clean up The Monto. Similarly to St. Vitalis of Gaza before them, Duff and Devane began an outreach to the prostitutes living in often brutal and inhuman conditions in the "kip houses". Mother and baby home controversy overshadows work of Frank Duff: Legion of Mary founder a tireless worker in aiding single mothers to raise own children by Paddy Murray, The Irish Times, Tues. Dec. 28 2021.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Pages 51-57, 61-92. As part of this work, Duff established the Sancta Maria hostel, a safe house for former prostitutes whom the Legion of Mary helped to run away from their "kip keepers" and start a new life. Following the Irish War of Independence, Duff also persuaded the first Catholic Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, former Irish Army general W. R. E. Murphy, to launch an iron-gloved crackdown. The raids ended with 120 arrests and Gen. Murphy announced the closure of all the remaining brothels following massive DMP raids on 12 March 1925. Mother and baby home controversy overshadows work of Frank Duff: Legion of Mary founder a tireless worker in aiding single mothers to raise own children by Paddy Murray, The Irish Times, Tue Dec 28 2021.
Prostitution, including smaller Kip-Houses posing as pubs and operating discreetly while paying protection money to corrupt Irish politicians and law enforcement, continued to exist in Dublin. These kip-houses included the "Cozy Kitchen" on North King Street and "Cafe Continental" on Bolton Street, both of which were run by Dublin kip-keeper Dolly Fawcett and remained open until well into the 1950s.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 55.
According to Northside resident Noelle Hughes, who knew Dolly Fawcett in her seventies, "The Cozy Kitchen" was located in the basement of a tenement house at 2 North King Street and was run by Dolly's son Stephen Fawcett until it closed down in 1957. Dolly's other son ran the Cafe Continental on Bolton Street.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 198. According to retired Guard Paddy Casey, the Cafe Continental was located next to the Bolton Street Technical School.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 158.
According to Hughes, prostitution in the area was widespread and visible, involving mostly working-class country women in their late teens to thirties who charged modest sums and met clients in flats, laneways, or alleyways. The activity was common knowledge across Dublin, particularly among sailors and dockworkers, as local men typically could not afford the services. Though police occasionally raided the area, they were often bribed to turn a blind eye. Despite some calls to shut it down, no action was taken until the operation eventually ceased and those running it left for England.Kevin C. Kearns (1994), Dublin Tenement Life, Penguin Books. Page 199.