The Double Standard Sporting House by Nancy Bernhard releases today, and one thing we can say about the book is that it’s not what you expect. Well, that and that it feels weirdly relevant today. The historical novel, set during the infamous reign of the Tammany Hall crime syndicate, focuses on sex work, portraying it as a survival strategy in a world where women had very few options.
Nancy Bernhard’s historical debut follows Nell “Doc” Hastings, a brothel owner who also runs a small free clinic for women. When a young woman enters her clinic bleeding and bruised, Nell discovers a sex ring selling virgin girls to the most prominent men in the city–and risks her entire business to bring them to justice. A hard subject, for sure, but one that illustrates the price both men and women pay
living in a hierarchical, patriarchal society.
Synopsis
Here is the synopsis for the book:
For fans of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River, debut historical fiction about a brothel nurse in nineteenth-century New York City who fights brutality in the sex trade and pioneers treatments for survivors of sexual violence.
A high-class brothel that entertains New York’s most powerful men, the Double Standard Sporting House funds a free clinic for women. When the Tammany Hall criminal syndicate takes over the city in 1868 and starts kidnapping girls, the house’s owner Nell “Doc” Hastings cannot stay quiet—especially after sixteen-year-old Vivie arrives at the clinic bruised and bleeding.
Resolving to seek justice for Vivie and girls like her, Doc builds an unlikely alliance with religious reformers, a rare honest ward cop, and an alluring newspaper publisher she can’t seem to keep away from. Even with their help, Doc will have to use her sharpest tools—secrets, guile, and a surgical blade—to prevent a dark turn in the sex trade.
Full of intrigue, friendship, and love, this timely story of a heroine erased from history by the sexual double standard reminds us that women help and heal one another, even when shameless criminals come to power.
Excerpt
And here’s an excerpt from ‘The Double Standard Sporting House‘:
September 1868
My day had seen a knotty birth, a giant prolapse, and rampant syphilis. I left the clinic well after dark and stepped into the back garden fretting over the prolapse. There were no good treatments for a wandering uterus, and after hours shaping a barrier from wax, wool, and resin, I was starving. What makes a womb so restless it leaves home like a hero setting off on a quest? What cuts its binds? Female bodies were criminally neglected by medicine, even as they inspired bountiful art, and a robust industry.
In a pragmatic adaptation to such paradoxes of womanhood, at the far end of the garden sat the establishment that funded the clinic. The Double Standard Sporting House served the richest, most discerning men in New York, and we lavished our girls with care. It was the only way for me to practice medicine as I wished, with no one above me and free to patients. Hardly anyone noticed, which was convenient.
The Double kitchen was winding down, and I asked a young maid for a plate. Before I could sit, Ciara appeared in peach silk looking apologetic, followed by a laughing Meg. My dearest friends who ran the house, they usually gave me time to pivot from patients to clients. It cheered me to see them smiling, but I hoped their news would not stand between me and my supper.
Ciara said, “One way or another we’ll look back on this day. Feeling lucky, Doc?”
“Tired, mostly.”
“Well, starch your petticoat. George Barnard is booked for Ruby tonight, and he sent a note. He’s bringing a rookie over now, and would take it as a huge favor if we could find him a girl.”
I liked George, and he was a favored client, but he knew we didn’t take walk-ins. Normally Meg and Ciara would so flood him with flattery he wouldn’t mind. But he was a state supreme court justice, fully owned by the Tammany Hall political machine and its boss Bill Tweed, and they were entertaining his request. They weren’t cowed; there would be an angle.
Tammany itself is difficult to explain, being a monster with many heads. It began a century before as a political club and now ran like a warring tribe. In the fall of 1868, they were poised to capture the mayor, governor, legislature, and supreme court of New York. We had several clients like George in its top echelon, amiable men who stole outlandishly from the city by padding contracts. They dispensed some fraction of the plunder to the needy in exchange for votes. This vast mob was seizing all the city’s levers of power.
“Do we have a girl for George’s mystery friend?” I asked, pouring a glass of cider.
Twinkling with mischief, Meg said, “For a price.”
“Who is he?”
Ciara said, “The note didn’t say, but the messenger came from Delmonico’s.” This was the city’s finest restaurant.
Meg looked me in the eye. “George is supping with Peter Sweeny.”
Well, well. The Double Standard just kept rising with the city’s reckless growth. The city chamberlain, second or likely first most powerful man in New York, the wizard of Tammany’s epic theft, Peter Sweeny was famously odd and prickly, and a devout Catholic. I flashed them a look of wonder and worry. A high-ranking and volatile client put us at risk of ruinous public scrutiny, but—and here was the angle—would also bring access and influence.
“Little bugger’ll need a world-class nickname,” said Meg.
“They used to call him Spider at Harry Hill’s. Maybe he’s handsy,” said Ciara.
I’d heard him called Brains and Bismarck. “What does Bismarck do for fun, I wonder.”
A pious man either abandoned or punished himself in a brothel’s pleasures. And how did one square churchy obedience with historic theft? I’d also heard Sweeny held renowned grudges. “Why the sudden interest in sport?”
A porter called from the stairs, “Miss Ciara?”
As we went up, I asked which girl they intended for him.
“It’ll take some juggling, but we thought Sophronia,” Meg said. This was our girl of the moment, an hourglass brunette with a guileless face, good with a novice.
George Barnard stood alone at the salon piano, noodling a sonata.
“Your Honor.”
“Evening, Doc, ladies.” He was tall with dark curly hair and a particularly squirrelly version of the requisite moustaches drooping down the sides of his chin. He took my hand in both of his and said his guest preferred to come straight to a private room.
Naturally Sweeny feared being seen at the Double, though many men got a charge from darting up the stairs. “He can come directly to the library.”
Ciara went to find Sophronia, and Meg and I crossed the hall to wait for George to fetch his friend. She whispered, “Saint Débauche,” and then, “Pope Pius the Libertine.”
I said, “I imagine he’s not so much embracing sport as he is falling into temptation. The Reluctant Pervert.
“Mommy’s Little Miscreant. Tinpot Degenerate.”
We put on our most pleasing faces as he slunk into the room and waited until the door closed to doff his hat and cloak. For all his fearsome intelligence, Peter Sweeny looked shy. Nearly my height of 5 foot 8 inches with sloped shoulders and thick black hair stabbing in all directions, he might have been handsome given another soul within, but the man was wooden and remote. I began to see how he squared God with fraud.
Nancy Bernhard is a journalism historian and yoga teacher, fascinated by how survivors of sexual and political violence heal through storytelling and movement. Having earned a BA in religion at Dartmouth, a PhD in American History at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Harvard, Bernhard turned her indignation over the sexual double standard into an absorbing tale rooted in the 19th century history of Tammany Hall. She was born in Brooklyn, and lives with her family in Somerville, Massachusetts.
