Something is mind-boggling about the fact that apparently, this woman identified herself as a prostitute despite knowing that it was a federally funded cameraman taking the picture. "OK, the picture's going to go all around the world, how do I identify myself now? Won't Mom be so proud!"

On the flip side, it's a decidedly unattractive picture of the profession. Maybe she got caught, and taking the picture is part of the plea?

[Those are two unlikely scenarios! And Arthur Rothstein was a "photographer." - Dave]

Without the camera flash I'm guessing this neighborhood was very dark and forbidding at night. Reminds me of a scene in Malcolm X where the camera pans a Harlem street that had been brutalized by poverty, with the white 'johns' visiting prostitutes in the ruins of old apartments.

… I am guessing that the doorway at right leads into the St. Louis Moral Improvement Society reading room.

I believe it would be in March 1942 that penicillin would be used for the first time in a civilian patient -- Anne Miller of New Haven, Connecticut -- for sepsis after a miscarriage, 13 years after Sir Alexander Fleming's discovery at St. Mary's Hospital, London.

"I'm not a madam. I'm a concierge!"