From shopping to takeaway food delivery, the internet has brought seismic change to nearly every sector of the economy – and Edinburgh’s sex industry is no different.
Since the turn of the century, the web has sparked a massive growth in women selling sex from private flats.
With the ability to advertise their services online through specialist sites, it became a boom time for prostitution in the capital.
Hundreds of sex workers – originating from dozens of countries around the world – would arrive to ply their trade.
Other lucrative avenues have opened up too, whether it’s virtual “cam sessions” or charging extra for punters to film encounters with their mobile phone.
Although safer than street walking, the women usually work alone – a situation which still leaves them more vulnerable to attacks than in a sauna.
And their isolation has made it easier for human traffickers, gangsters and pimps to take advantage of the vulnerable.
Clandestine brothels run from anonymous properties have been around for decades but relied on discreetly worded ads in the backs of newspapers, business cards or simply word of mouth.
After the millennium, more and more began to pop up in unexpected places and using online ads.
Residents in tenement blocks were often oblivious to what was going on in a neighbouring flat.
In 2006, undercover cops were visiting such homes amid fears women,
particularly those from abroad, could be held as sex slaves after being trafficked.
By the following year, support agency Scotpep (Scottish Prostitutes Education Programme) estimated that about 18 city flats were being used for prostitution.
A year earlier, its volunteer workers had checked on the well-being of women in just 12 addresses.
Around that time, such private flats accounted for only a handful of the 700 prostitutes thought to be active in Edinburgh.
Four Eastern European women were working from a brothel in Leith’s Victoria Quay in March 2007, just 200 metres from Scottish Government headquarters, with a burly minder escorting in any customers. That May, there was a Hungarian working from Leith’s Balfour Street, a pair of Scots each charging £60 for sex in Tollcross near the King’s Theatre and two women in their 40s based near Easter Road.
The offence of brothel-keeping was only being committed when two or more women, who may be together only for safety reasons, work from the same home.
Scotpep believed the then Lothian and Borders Police force knew about the majority of these flats, monitoring them from a distance. And officers were prepared to act over concerns about exploitation.
In 2006, two 21-year-old Eastern Europeans were found to have been trafficked into the city by pimps.
The following April, 20 officers raided a waterfront flat in Leith’s Ocean Way after a two-month surveillance operation identified it as a brothel popular with gamblers from the nearby Stanley Casino. Two women in their 30s, one Chinese and the other Thai, were found inside. In this case they were found to be illegal immigrants and faced deportation.
However, police swoops on four Edinburgh flats in 2008 saw seven women, aged 20 to 35, rescued as suspected trafficking victims under Operation Pentameter. Six were from south-east Asia, although five later disappeared from a safe house amid fears some might have returned to their captors.
Asian women were becoming increasingly prevalent among the sex workers operating from private properties. In 2007, a Thai prostitute named Joy was working alone from a one-bedroom flat in a plush Georgian townhouse in Stockbridge’s St Bernard’s Crescent where doctors, lawyers and ex-chancellor Alistair Darling had all kept homes.
The 28-year-old was charging £60 for half an hour of sex while renting the address for £450 a month.
It was, perhaps, the start of another new trend where working girls rented out stylish flats in upmarket areas, often in the city centre, rather than spots in Leith, Tollcross or Dalry.
The number of private flats selling sex was accelerating and, by 2013, it was estimated some 300 were being used.
In that year, two Thai hookers set up in a £700-a-week rented mews house in Dewar Place Lane only 80 yards from the West End police station in Torphichen Place.
The city’s high-end hotels, including five-star establishments, were also being used by call girls to see clients in rooms costing up to £500 a day.
The range of nationalities among the women was also increasing, with many countries around Europe, South America, Africa and Asia all well-represented.
Some visited Edinburgh only briefly as part of a national – or even international – ‘tour’. Taking out a short-term holiday let, they would benefit from their status as a “new girl in town” for a week or month then move on.
Another new phenomenon was the “porn star on tour”, where women known from hardcore films would visit the city to “meet” fans. One porn actress spent a week at a Haymarket address, charging £300 an hour or £3000 for an “overnight”.
Using popular websites dedicated to advertising their services, prostitutes post often-explicit photos of themselves and exhaustive lists of their sexual “dos and don’ts”. Perhaps partly due to the pressures of the marketplace and increased competition, many say they cater to sadomasochism and various outlandish fetishes.
Many offer webcam-for-cash sessions and some charge around £50 to £100 extra if a client wants to film their liaison.
But as coronavirus struck the globe last year, Edinburgh’s sex workers were hit hard, with the vast majority respecting lockdown measures, cancelling bookings, and now facing an uncertain future.
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