Slavery's Impasse: Slave Prostitutes, Small-Time Mistresses, and the Brazilian Law of 1871

In March 1871 the young slave woman Honorata went to police in the Rio de Janeiro parish of Sacramento to complain formally that her mistress had forced her into prostitution from the age 12. She testified that she was sent on various occasions to houses of known ill-repute “to be at the window receiving visitors.” At other times her mistress arranged the assignations herself, instructing Honorata to dress and go with a client. Between these stints at brothels, and sometimes at the same time, she was hired out as a domestic, usually as laundress or cook. The court record described Honorata as nineteen years old, black, a Creole born in the province of Bahia, and brought to Rio de Janeiro by her mistress some years earlier, unmarried and a domestic servant.