Short answer to your second question is "yes." Long dresses were a boon: you could cover practically anything.

Olivia Oatman was the first tattooed Western woman, in 1858-she was kidnapped and then ransomed from Native Americans and became a celebrity.

Women were tattooed in the late Victorian era, including Winston Churchill's mom.

All of my sources are quotes from a book, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoos by Margot Mifflin. Unfortunately, the quotes are in the... Daily Mail. shudder

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2013/01/slide-show-a-secret-history-of-women-and-tattoo.html#slide_ss_0=1

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2270600/History-womens-tattoos-From-Native-Americans-cancer-victims-tatts-instead-breast-reconstruction.html