Portraits of a painted lady: Stunning vintage photos reveal the 'tramp stamp' is not so modern phenomenon after all

Once a rare sight, spotting a tattoo on a female ankle or shoulder has become an ubiquitous part of modern life. But as the stunning collection of photographs shows, getting inked isn't quite the modern phenomenon it's often thought to be, reports the Daily Mail.

There's Pam Nash, a noted tattoo champion of the 1930s, having extra flowers added to the Japanese garden adorning her back, a Danish tattooist creating a delicate rose on a client's thigh and a 1930s film fan admiring the portrait of actor Gary Cooper etched onto her shoulder.
 

The man responsible, hugely popular London tattooist George Burchett, also features in a photograph dating from 1936 which shows him creating a snake on a female client's leg.
 

But not every image is an innocent one. Poignantly, one portrait shows London prostitute Margaret McGowan who was found murdered in a Kensington car park on the 25th November, 1965. Her killer, a serial murderer dubbed Jack the Stripper, was never caught.
 

Other colourful images show a tattooist creating a bluebird on a female client's breast, while another shows a woman covered from head to toe in markings flirtatiously twirling her skirt.



While tattoos are a relatively recent phenomenon in Europe and the USA, body art has long been part of Polynesian culture and has also been found on the mummified remains of Ancient Egyptian priests and priestesses.
 

Although tattoos first made an appearance in the woad etchings of Iron Age Britons, they didn't reappear in Western culture until the 19th century and the first recorded body art craze which originated in Victorian high society.
 

Popularised by 19th century explorers returning home to the UK full of tales about the weird and wonderful tattooed women they saw on their travels, tattoos swiftly became the accessory of choice for upper class women.
 

Such was the intensity of the craze for body art during the Victorian period, even Queen Victoria is believed to have had one in the form of a Bengal tiger fighting with a python.
 

Wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill's mother Jennie also had a serpent tattoo, although hers was rebelliously visible and inked bracelet style around her wrist.
 

Sadly, tattoos didn't equal control for many Victorian women, some of whom were tattooed against their will and press-ganged into work as circus attractions.

Others became tattoo artists themselves, including American Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship and British tattooist Justine Knight who opened her London business in 1921.
 

 
But while tattoos remained popular during the 1920s, their popularity waned in the wake of the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Left to languish in the fashion wilderness for nearly 40 years, the tattoo next staged a comeback in the 1970s, when they were claimed by the nascent feminist movement before becoming part of the body-conscious beautifying of the 1980s and then gaining mainstream status in the 1990s.