The Hermaphrodite Slave Who Was Shared Between Master and His Wife… Both Became Obsessed (1851) | HO

In the sweltering August of 1851, the tobacco fields of Southside Virginia held secrets far darker than the thick red mud that clung to wagon wheels after the rains. For generations, Belmont Estate had stood as a symbol of prosperity and tradition—a sprawling property of 30,000 acres, its red-brick Georgian mansion presiding over rows of slave cabins and curing barns.

But one humid night, a single entry in a slave trader’s ledger would set in motion a tragedy that would ultimately consume the Rutled family and leave Belmont haunted by shadows no amount of time could dispel.

The ledger’s notation was brief but ominous: “One specimen, age approximately 19, purchased from Charleston Market, unique physical characteristics. Price 28470, nearly four times the standard rate.” The buyer was Thomas Rutled, master of Belmont, a man known for his stern but measured management, a product of Virginia’s planter aristocracy.

What Thomas brought home that night was not just another enslaved person, but a living mystery—Jordan, a hermaphrodite, both male and female, neither and both, an anomaly that defied the rigid categories of the antebellum South.

Jordan’s arrival at Belmont was met with curiosity and unease. The slave trader, Samuel Wickham, specialized in “specialty acquisitions”—people whose skills or attributes could command a premium. Wickham’s pitch was clinical, almost detached, but Thomas felt something shift inside him as he listened.

Jordan was educated, trained to submit to medical examination, and possessed a beauty that was impossible to categorize. The face was delicate, the voice pitched between registers, the body ambiguous beneath a simple cotton shift.

Thomas purchased Jordan not for field labor, but for reasons he could not fully articulate. He housed Jordan in a cottage near the gardens, isolated from both the slave quarters and the main house. That evening, he told his wife Catherine about the acquisition, describing Jordan as an unusually educated house slave. Catherine, herself fragile and haunted by the loss of a stillborn child, showed little interest—until she saw Jordan for herself.

The encounter in the cottage marked the beginning of the Rutleds’ descent. Catherine’s initial curiosity quickly became fascination. She examined Jordan with clinical detachment, then with something deeper and more troubled. For the first time in months, husband and wife came together—not out of love, but out of a shared secret, a shared obsession with the impossible person living just beyond their garden.

Jordan was soon moved into the main house, given new clothes and better food, officially designated as Catherine’s personal maid. But the household noticed the change. The master and mistress would disappear upstairs for hours, and Jordan would emerge moving carefully, face blank and eyes distant. Harriet, the cook, sensed something was deeply wrong.

Thomas neglected plantation business, Catherine grew thinner and paler, and Jordan existed in a strange privileged isolation, neither part of the enslaved community nor truly part of the household.

As autumn deepened, the Rutleds’ obsession intensified. Thomas acquired medical texts and kept a secret journal, filled with observations and sketches of Jordan—documents later destroyed in a desperate attempt to erase the evidence.

Catherine commissioned garments in both masculine and feminine styles, experimenting with Jordan’s presentation, searching for meaning in ambiguity. “I want to understand what you are,” she told Jordan. “Does it matter, mistress?” Jordan replied. “I am what you see, what you want to see.”

The other enslaved people whispered about Jordan, fearing and pitying the strange new arrival who existed in a world apart. Some spoke of conjure and hoodoo, others dismissed such talk as superstition, but none could explain the decay they witnessed in the big house. Thomas became feverish and hollow-eyed, Catherine stopped eating, and Jordan endured, moving through the household like a ghost.

The crisis came in late October when two field hands attempted to run away. Thomas, forced to administer punishment, watched with distant eyes, his mind elsewhere. Harriet, witnessing his detachment, realized the master was disappearing into his obsession, becoming less present with each passing day. That night, raised voices echoed through the house—anger and desperation breaking through the silence.

By November, the plantation was failing. Fields lay fallow, bills went unpaid, and neighboring planters began to whisper about the Rutleds’ absence from church and society. Catherine withdrew entirely, wandering the house like a sleepwalker, her friends turned away at the door. The enslaved people carried on by inertia, maintaining routines for their own survival as their masters abandoned them.

Jordan, once viewed with suspicion, became an object of pity. Dileia, Catherine’s former maid, offered comfort, but Jordan replied simply, “Thank you. But I am alone. We all are in the end.” Thomas withdrew even from Jordan, spending nights in his study, drinking and staring at the locked journal he no longer wrote in.

Catherine filled the void, spending entire days in Jordan’s room, confessing her failures and sense of emptiness. “Do you hate us?” she asked. Jordan answered, “Hate requires a kind of freedom I don’t have, mistress. I simply endure you, as I have endured everyone before.”

The breaking point arrived with the visit of Dr. Edmund Carile, a physician from Richmond. Thomas, desperate for validation, invited Carile to examine Jordan. The doctor’s assessment was professional and dignified, but his concern for the atmosphere in the house was palpable. “You’ve become dangerously fixated on this slave,” he warned Thomas. “This isn’t healthy.” But Thomas could not hear it; the obsession had its hooks too deep.

Isolation brought by heavy snows accelerated the decline. Thomas stopped managing the plantation, Catherine stopped leaving the third floor, and Jordan endured, speaking more often, quietly challenging the couple’s rationalizations. “You and the mistress are enslaved to your desires,” Jordan told Thomas. “I submit to you by law, but you submit to your obsessions.” The truth struck deeper than any punishment could.

By February, the tension was unbearable. Harriet, desperate to prevent bloodshed, pleaded with Thomas to sell Jordan and end the cycle. Thomas knew she was right but was powerless to act. The household moved through the motions of survival, waiting for the inevitable disaster.

On February 14th, 1852, Catherine reached her breaking point. She confronted Jordan, pistol in hand, her anguish pouring out in a torrent of confession and despair. Thomas arrived too late to prevent tragedy. In a moment of terrible clarity, Catherine turned the gun on herself, ending the nightmare with a single shot. She lingered in agony for seventeen hours before dying at dawn, Thomas at her side, begging forgiveness she could not give.

The aftermath was swift and brutal. Thomas claimed Catherine’s death was an accident, the magistrate accepted the story, and the funeral was held in cold rain, attended by neighbors who knew nothing of the true horror. The enslaved community knew, and the story of Belmont spread in whispers—a cautionary tale of obsession and the corrupting nature of absolute power.

Thomas sold Belmont, destroyed every document related to Jordan, and dispersed the enslaved workers, breaking families and communities. But he kept Jordan, moving to Lynchburg, living as a hermit, haunted by guilt and grief. Their relationship became one of ghosts—master and slave in law, but in practice, two people bound only by shared tragedy.

Thomas died nine months later, his spirit broken, his heart simply stopping in the night. Jordan was sold at auction, vanishing from the historical record as so many enslaved people did. Perhaps Jordan found freedom, perhaps not. The silence of history is its own answer.

Belmont Estate stood empty, its sealed room a source of dread and legend. The house changed hands, each owner staying only briefly before fleeing the oppressive atmosphere. In 1865, the mansion burned, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, perhaps by the weight of its own history.

Today, nothing remains but crumbling foundations and whispered stories—reminders of a tragedy that defied easy explanation, and of a person whose existence challenged every assumption of the time.

In the end, the story of Jordan and the Rutleds is not one of supernatural horror, but of human obsession and the destruction it brings. It is a story erased from official memory, but preserved in legend—a warning from the darkest chapters of American history, and a testament to the suffering endured by those who were never allowed to be fully human.