Prostitute Revenue Stamps of Rosario de Santa Fe: An Attempt to Limit the Effects of Prostitution in the City of Rosario, Argentina, 1893-1932, a Stamp Exhibit Paperback – March 31, 2026

This book is the stamp exhibit of Argentinian revenue stamps.used to regulate the health of prostitutes in Rosario de Santa Fe. It is difficult to find excellent revenue postal history exhibits; this is one.In the last half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Argentina was a destination for millions of immigrants. Many of the newcomers were young men, and the scarcity of female companionship led to a thriving prostitution industry.After Argentina legalized prostitution in the early 1870’s, many municipalities restricted the activity of prostitutes and attempted to control the spread of venereal disease with public health measures. The City of Rosario, in the Province of Santa Fe, was unique in its use of specific revenue stamps to pay for its program.In 1893, the city health department (Asistencia Pública) issued regulations requiring prostitutes to register and undergo physical examinations twice weekly. Each woman was issued a booklet in which the examination results were recorded. The prostitute (or the madam) had to purchase specially issued revenue stamps (Sanitarios) to pay for the examinations.The stamp was placed in the booklet at the appropriate place, and various markings were added after the medical examination had been completed. There was an examination result marking and, usually, dispensary handstamp marking, which included the date. There were four possible medical results: SANA (healthy), CON REGLA (menstruating), ENFERMA (sick), and OBSERVACIÓN (under observation).Sanitarios were issued from 1893 until at least 1928. Usually, new stamps were printed for each year, often with the same or similar design but in a different color. They were lithographed on low-quality, pre-gummed paper, in sheets of twenty-five. Many were printed by Jacobo Peuser whose firm printed many other Argentine revenue stamps of the era.The common stamps used to pay the fee for routine examinations had print runs of 15,000 to 40,000 per year; the higher-value stamps had print runs of 1,000 or less, and some overprints were produced in batches of only a few hundred stamps.The Sanitario stamps document the attempts by the City of Rosario to regulate and control legalized prostitution with the goal of minimizing its negative impact on society. They have fascinated collectors for over a hundred years. They’re fun to collect, but we still have much to learn about them.While the stamps are certainly interesting, they are only a small window into a world that was often unpleasant and would be considered repugnant today. This was the era of ‘white slavery’, and the cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Rio de Janeiro were at its epicenter. Women and young girls were forced into prostitution, subjected to slave-like conditions, bought and sold as property, and exposed to all sorts of possibly fatal diseases as well as unwanted pregnancies, with little or no protection from the corrupt municipal authorities.Many women were imported from other countries. In an attempt to stop human trafficking, the British government went so far as to station a woman at the docks to offer protection to women she suspected were being imported as prostitutes. Some of the pimps, who were organized into a group called the ‘Zwi Migdal Society,’ would travel to Eastern Europe and marry women from poor villages or recruit them to be domestic workers for rich families in Argentina. After the women boarded ships, they were forcibly transformed into prostitutes with beatings and starvation. Only in the early 1930s, due to the efforts of a few brave women who were willing to speak and a handful of government officials who resisted the bribes of the pimps, were these evil practices finally stamped out.This is a treat for stamp collectors and stamp exhibitors.Another fine stamp exhibit from Exhibitors Press Read more