The sex trade has long been a conundrum for Barbados.On one hand, sex workers and sex work are condemned and ridiculed in society but on the other, the so-called world’s oldest profession is practised seemingly without prejudice.Whether or not we want to bury our heads in the sand on another taboo subject, sex work has been thriving in Barbados since European and Africans settled here almost four hundred years ago. In the 1700s Rachel Pringle Polgreen, a free mulatto, operated a “hotel” for the (sexual) entertainment of British Naval officers.Today, the activities that take place nightly along Bush Hill, in some popular City nooks and crannies, in some sophisticated locale on the South Coast or the Platinum Coast reveal a thriving business.Needless to say, there are even more direct methods of procuring sex workers on the internet.
