Evidence for historic sex work is often hidden within archival sources, surrounded by the menial occurrences of past lives. For this reason, historic sex workers often remain invisible until deliberately searched for. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, the Great Fire of 1892 destroyed most of the city, leaving no material culture for the study of sex work. My research seeks to reconstruct and understand historic sex work in St. John’s from first settlement until the Great Fire through an in-depth search for evidence in archival records and intersite analysis. This will help determine the nature of material culture produced at brothel sites and explore the living conditions of historic sex workers. Additionally, I will examine how marginalized peoples are depicted in these records and how sexualized spaces are produced and regulated within a community. As the retrieval and consolidation of archival fragments has never been attempted in the region, this research project is the first to illustrate the historic sex trade by producing a temporal and spatial description of the existence and origins of sex work in St. John’s.