Strolling down Talbot Street in the direction of the Spire, tourists and Irish citizens alike pay little heed towards a convenience store and a neighbouring block of apartments they pass enroute, blissfully unaware of the history concealed between these walls. Effectively scrubbed from public memory, few would guess that nested between these unassuming facades lies a historic entrance to what was once Europe’s largest red light district, the Monto. Deriving its name from Montgomery Street (now Foley Street) and comprising less than a square mile, the Monto constituted an area between Talbot Street, Amiens Street, Gardiner Street and Gloucester Street (now Seán McDermott Street). Active from the 1860s to 1925, up to 1,600 prostitutes were employed across its premises during its peak, with clients allegedly including prominent figures such as the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) and James Joyce. Yet despite the enormous scale on which it operated, accounts of the Monto have been exiled to the shadows of Irish history, the voices of its women erased. Who were the women of the Monto, and what were their stories?
Commonly referred to as “poor unfortunates”, the majority of the Monto’s workers were destitute Irish women whose economic and physical survival was contingent upon their prostitution, a brutal trade they often entered into unwillingly. As levels of poverty reached unprecedented heights following the Great Famine (which roughly lasted from 1845-1852), women in particular faced enormous obstacles in securing an income; frequently denied schooling and illiterate, their options were essentially reduced to employment as domestic servants or factory workers, or joining the workhouse or nunnery. With the exception of the nunnery, each alternative often entailed sexual violence, verbal and physical abuse, and unsanitary working conditions, while even pursuing such avenues for income could prove dangerous. Seeking work as domestic servants, many of the prostitutes within the Monto were in fact country girls who were trafficked into sex work by pimps or “bully boys” and “fancy men”, who operated as enforcers for Dublin’s prolific and wealthy madams. Dispatched to the platforms of Connolly Train Station, attractive men were purposefully selected to prey on vulnerable girls, drawing them to the Monto with the offer of domestic work, an illusory promise which quickly shattered.
While the brothels of the Monto operated on a tiered system, with luxurious houses for wealthy clientele and squalid tenement buildings for the poor, violence, venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies did not discriminate, plaguing women across the entirety of this compact area. Run by cutthroat madams and pimps (who utilised weapons such as razors and lead pipes), the Monto regularly displayed scenes of nightmarish violence: horrific beatings and punishments were routinely meted out to prostitutes who dared defy madams, including the slashing of a prostitute’s face for offences such as attempting to keep their earnings. Venereal diseases such as syphilis were also rampant, ravaging the bodies of prostitutes who, turning to hospitals for aid, received no such charity. In a shocking statement which illuminates the inhumane treatment society and the state subjected such “fallen” or “dissolute” women to, in his book To Hell or To Monto Maurice Curtis claims that Monto workers with advanced syphilis were habitually smothered with pillows when receiving hospital care.
While state institutions regarded the prostitutes of the Monto with ruthless contempt, local women often provided sisterly support, supplying street workers with tea and assisting pregnant and discarded prostitutes during labour. Prostitutes often left their babies in the care of these local women, promising but failing to return, which led to the phenomenon of “Monto babies”.
Although life within the Monto constituted a miserable existence for most of its inhabitants, for some it presented a route to financial stability and an escape from oppressive home circumstances. In her book Wrong Women: Selling Sex in Monto, Dublin’s Forgotten Red Light District, Dr Caroline West states that the Monto “was a way for many of its inhabitants to escape oppressive or violent family life, challenge social and gender norms, make some money, survive, dress better, live better, find a partner or find a pathway to new life in America or England”. Some prostitutes would later go on to become madams, entering a lucrative business arena which included colossal characters such as Annie Mack (who ran an area of the Monto known as “Mackstown”), the notorious May Oblong, and Bella Cohen, whose memory is preserved in the “Circe” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which the Monto appears as “Nighttown”.
The Monto eventually met its end with the emergence of an Irish Catholic State, with the Catholic Church and Garda Chief Commissioner General William Murphy co-ordinating a procession that marked its “blessing” and purified its streets, following a police raid on the Monto on the 12th March 1925, which culminated in over 120 arrests. Led by Frank Duff of the newly established Legion of Mary and observed by thousands of onlookers, hundreds of priests and devout Catholics participated in a march through the Monto, trailing behind a large wooden crucifix and pinning the Sacred Heart to brothel doors. Although several of the wealthy madams (who sold their properties) later became prominent figures in Catholic society following the Monto’s closure, prostitutes were not so fortunate, with many placed in Magdalene laundries or other state institutions.
While the Monto could potentially represent a world of agency and personal liberty, it simultaneously functioned as a site of horrific abuse and exploitation, specifically targeting society’s marginalised. In the hundred years since the Monto closed its doors, little has changed in this regard; with the emergence of the housing crisis in recent years, accounts of “sex for rent” schemes have sky-rocketed, with a 2024 report from the National Women’s Council of Ireland establishing that poverty stricken women are among the most vulnerable to such sexual exploitation. Trafficking for sex remains a highly gendered crime in Ireland, as attested to in a 2023 report from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which found that 96 per cent of sex trafficking victims in Ireland were female.
Previously relegated to the margins of history, the voices of the Monto’s women have begun to emerge due to the work of local historians such as Terry Fagan, who organises walking tours of the area and who has produced extensive research on its past inhabitants. Hidden for far too long, the stories of these women further illuminate this country’s troubled past regarding the abhorrent treatment of its female citizens, while parallels to the present day highlight the progress we have yet to make.
