Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a woman who works in a brothel.

1999

K. Sampson Powder 55: He could well have afforded the high-class, high-price call-girls of Park Lane.

2. (orig. US) a prostitute who advertises her services through an agency, through the (print) media, in telephone kiosks etc and visits a client in his own home or hotel room; also attrib.

1913		Day Book (Chicago) 25 Apr.32/1: Several well-groomed and handsomely dressed young girls were brought before the committee and denied they were ‘call girls’.
1916		Amer. Labor Yr Bk I 284: The existence of the ‘call-girl’ system, serving ‘respectable’ men with ‘respectable’ girls and protecting the reputation of both.
1922		E. Paul Impromptu 33: For a call girl to be ‘turned down’ [...] hurts her professional standing.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 198: ‘Call Girls’ [...] Working girls who take pay for the pleasure they give and are subject to telephone calls by hotel keepers and others.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 7: He remembered what the call girl had told the little doctor.
1953		W.P. McGivern Big Heat 56: Do you think we made you a sergeant of Detectives so you can waste your time interviewing call-girls and hotel clerks?
1954		Morpeth Herald 2 Apr. 4/1: [advert] Truth Behind the Call-Girl Racket [...] Starts in Sunday’s News of the World.
1963		‘Geoffrey Tolhurst’ Flat 4 King’s Cross (1966) 60: [T]he previous receptioniste had left to become a call girl, and Maria had been particularly distressed about it, as the girl was a relative from the Old Country.
1964		‘Charles Barrett’ Address: Kings Cross 84: Kim ran the biggest call-girl racket in the city, in the whole country, in fact.
1967		L. Bruce Essential Lenny Bruce 149: His regulars consist of [...] call girls and their business managers.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players vii: Looking back at the parade which has passed through our lives, we see [...] suburbanites, streetwalkers, revolutionaries, call girls, writers, tough guys, homosexuals, photographers, publishers, lawyers.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 16: [I] got a room at the Fairmont, a magnum of Mumms and a call girl.
1997		L. Pettiway Workin’ It 173: I’m a call Mom.
1999		E. Bunker Mr Blue 88: I became friends with call girls.
2000		Guardian Guide 15–21 Jan. 54: A giant performance as ex-con George, reduced to chauffeuring Cathy Tyson’s West End call-girl.