It was of the criminalisation of brothels that saw the most application from then 1885 Criminal Law Amendments Act. The law was passed without defining what a brothel was, and between 1885 to approximately 1900 through case law precedent, a brothel became defined as a place where more than one woman practices prostitution. In Britain today, this is still the legal definition of brothels.

Once it became easier to to prosecute brothels, women could no longer work together for safety or to save money on rent. Brothel prosecutions skyrocketed after 1885, but the brothels did not stop happening. Late 19th century London largely saw street solicitation. Women would solicit men all over the city and bring them back to premises where they paid for the use of a room but didn't live in them. The majority of these premises, as recorded in historical records, were owned or managed by women themselves. The largest group of people who ran brothels and were prosecuted for keeping brothels were women selling sex themselves. The next biggest group prosecuted for brothel keeping were men and women who were married. Most of the time, a brothel was simply a house that women clubbed together to rent. And until the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, police tended to look the other way unless it became a nuisance in the neighbourhood.

The case files during this time show a dramatic change as women could no longer work together because they're being prosecuted for brothel keeping. As a result, they use furnished rooms, and are forced into streets and parklands (with Hyde Park as one example). The biggest effect of all, rapidly developed over the course of the 1880s, is what police called the 'one woman brothel'. These were houses subdivided into individual flats where landlords would fit a room to make it legally constitute a separate dwelling. These landlords were usually men could profit from charging high rents to several women in the same house, but none of them would be considered a brothel because they were all rented separately. These men would charge women incredibly high rents, called 'prostitutes rents' by the police.