Meet Jack Bender, Nashville's 19th-Century Sex Worker of Unknown Gender

OK, so I've given you a cover story and a follow-up on Rebecca Higgins, Nashville's forgotten 19th-century madam. But there’s one more 19th-century sex worker I want to tell you about, even though the story raises a lot of questions I don’t have answers to. But I also like the questions! It’s good to be reminded that there are just some things we don’t get to know with any certainty, especially when it comes to how people in previous centuries understood things like gender and sexuality. 

Elizabeth Ferguson was born in roughly 1838 in Virginia — maybe. Her first son, Augustus Bender/Baker was born in 1856, maybe in Ohio, followed two years later by Eugene Bender. In the first census I could find her in, the 1860 census, she was living here in Nashville with the two boys, her occupation listed as “prostitute.”

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In the last census she’s in, 1870, she’s Elizabeth Doyle — a 28-year-old keeper of a house of ill fame. Augustus is with her. Eugene is not. Also in the house is 3-year-old Lulu Snyder and Elizabeth’s sisters, 23-year-old Anne, 19-year-old Maggie and 16-year-old Sally. They are all prostitutes. Note that, if she really was 28 in 1870, she had her first kid when she was 14.

When she died in 1878, she was buried in the Nashville City Cemetery under the name E.J. Doyle.

Now forget about Elizabeth, because if you were in Nashville at the same time as this family, you would have never heard of this person called Elizabeth. This person was known as the notorious Jack Bender.

Jack Bender was a tough son of a bitch. In December 1865, a man had $250 dollars stolen off him at Bender’s place. In July, 1866, Bender was arrested for disorderly conduct. In August 1866, Florida East sued “Mr. Jack Bender” for payment for services rendered when Ms. East was enslaved. The suit was dismissed. In November 1866, a warrant was issued for Bender’s arrest for threatening to murder a hackman. In October 1867, Bender’s sister Maggie sued a guy for fathering her child and abandoning them. The Nashville Union and Dispatch reported that Maggie “lived with her sister, Jack Bender, the proprietress of a second-class bagnio, and has lived a life of shame during her stay here.” Same, Maggie. Same.

Then, for a couple of years, it’s just month after month of Bender paying fines for running the house of ill fame. And then it’s January 1869, and Jack is arrested for taking $70 off a member of the state legislature while he was at Bender’s brothel. The town erupts! This is the most fun story in the papers at the moment. But then the anonymous legislator realizes that, if he continues to press charges, his wife will find out he was at Jack Bender’s house and suddenly this is all resolved with Jack going free.

So question one: Was Jack trans? Was Jack dressing and living as a man? It's really hard to say. Points against it: Jack was born Elizabeth, and even as Jack was referred to as Miss Jack Bender quite often. Maybe Jack was just a name Bender went by for some reason. But as often as the papers call Jack “she” or so-and-so’s sister, they also run stories that don’t mention Jack’s gender at all. And there is the one story that called Jack “Mr.” It’s a local paper that has run a ton of pieces on Jack. Did they briefly once forget? Or did they briefly — once — respect Jack's gender? 

There’s one funny story about a woman in Jack’s house who got arrested for stealing from Jack; it ran in the Republican Banner in May 1866. 

Just here there was a rustle of silks, and the lights of the Harem of the “House of Bender” glided like a bunch of sunbeams in amongst the unterrified. The House of Bender is presided over by an illustrious female Potentate, who rejoiceth in the eccentric cognomen of “Jack Bender.” Her palace of Como, shut in by Alpine hills, and lit by Petroleum in Alabaster lamps is situate, geographically speaking in Line street

[In typical fashion for the Banner, there’s a poem between these two paragraphs, which I’m not going to reproduce. But I am going to mention it because, by God, if you could count on the Banner for anything, you could count on a random poem for no goddamn reason in its pages.]

But we digress. This extraordinary presence of the Line street crème de la crème, was for the investigation of the charge against Miss Ida French, of stealing one linen dress and a sheet from Jack Bender, with whom she had been boarding. She had a velvet cap on her head, a white feather on its top and flowing curls beneath. The charge was proved groundless, and she was discharged, and the indignant goddesses swept undulatingly streetward.

Here’s a thing we maybe can be certain of: When papers in the 1800s associated the word "eccentric" with someone, the papers often were insinuating that this person had "eccentric" sexual habits — i.e., they slept with people of their own gender. But in Bender’s case, it might also be a hint that Bender’s gender presentation is out of the ordinary. Bender could be dressing as a man. Or maybe it’s just an acknowledgement of Bender’s unusual name. I can’t say.

But here’s Miss Ida French, accused of stealing a linen dress and a sheet. The linen dress is contrasted with the silks of the sex workers who came to watch the proceeding. Plain vs. Fancy. But with the mention of the bedsheet, the writer may also be insinuating that this linen dress is a nightgown. I think there’s also a possible insinuation in the way the writer frames where French is staying, because “boarding with” could imply with-with — which might mean that French could steal Bender’s bedsheet and nightgown, because French was sharing Bender’s bed.

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This story is clearly meant to be funny. But why? Is it supposed to be giggle-worthy that these two women might have been sleeping together? Is it supposed to be funny because of course this silk-strewn goddess didn’t steal a crappy linen dress because she is too classy for mere linen? Or is it supposed to be funny because of course she didn’t steal Bender’s linen dress, because we all know Bender doesn’t wear dresses and so presumably doesn’t own one? Or is the humor because the readers all know that Bender’s women aren’t actually well-put-together goddesses but the kinds of women that get arrested for being drunk and laying in the street?

Humor ages like milk. Things that were funny 50 years ago aren’t funny now. Jokes from 100 years ago make little or no sense. And this semi-serious news story about a very minor brothel theft is nearly inexplicable. I can tell it’s supposed to amuse the reader, but I don’t know why. Humor depends on context, and a lot of context gets lost to time.

One last interesting-to-me thing. Jack Bender is referred to as “the original Grecian bender” in one news item. By the mid-1860s, “Grecian bender” was slang for a sex worker. In the late 1800s, though, the Grecian Bend was a fashionable silhouette caused by women leaning forward wearing a huge bustle. It’s supposed to resemble the slouch of the subjects of ancient Greek statues. Of course, I immediately texted my fashion historian friend Sara Harvey, apologized for every message from me lately being some kind of fashion pop quiz, and then asked how this weird fashion trend could be linked to Greek statuary since very few Greek statues, if any, look like foraging chickens. 

She didn’t think it was. Not directly anyway. She linked the term to a style of holding oneself that was fashionable in the 1820s, where women would slouch and recline like Greek statuary — and this was scandalous, cutting-edge fashion because it meant they weren’t wearing the busk down the front of their corsets. And I realized, oh shit! Nashville actually has an example of a fashionable 1820s woman doing the Grecian Bend — Mrs. Mary Overton from Traveller’s Rest, one of my favorite non-witches of Nashville.

The whole Grecian Bender thing brings up one last mystery. When Elizabeth Ferguson began to go by Jack Bender, was it because of its slang connection to Bender’s profession? Was this like a person today switching names from Elizabeth Ferguson to Jack Hooker while doing sex work? Because that also tickles me a bit, so I hope it was intentional.