These men are the "nameless and faceless" clientele of the unnamed Galveston prostitute with whom Houston lives with for seven years in The Hamlet. He imagines them as a "blight" upon her reproductive system, "the Babylonian interdict by heaven forever against reproduction" (236).
According to what Miss Reba says in Sanctuary, the men who have patronized her brothel during the 20 years she's been running it include "some of the biggest men in Memphis" - "bankers, lawyers, doctors" as well as "two police captains" (143). When Horace visits the brothel to talk with Temple, Reba tells him that she's done business with many lawyers, including "the biggest lawyer in Memphis" - and when she adds that this man weighed 280 pounds and "had his own special bed made and sent down here," "biggest" acquires an additional meaning (211).
When thinking about money in The Sound and the Fury, Jason is reminded of the local merchant, "a man right here in Jefferson [who] made a lot of money selling rotten goods to niggers" (194). This man hoards his money until he gets sick, when he "joins the church and buys himself a Chinese missionary" as a means to his own salvation (194).
In Flags in the Dust the man whom Pappy and John Henry tell about Young Bayard's accident is an anonymous "merchant" in town; the merchant, in turn, tells Old Bayard.
Throughout all the oddities of Mrs. Gant's and Zilphia's lives in "Miss Zilphia Gant," the family dressmaking shop continues to "do well" with the women of Jefferson who can afford to have hand-tailored clothes (378, 381). After Zilphia returns to Jefferson with a story about a second marriage and a girl she calls her daughter, "the ladies" - as the narrator calls the shop's clients - "never tired of fondling little Zilphia," as he calls the girl (381).
The phrases "the women" (119) and "the ladies" (124) are used on several occasions in "A Rose for Emily" to describe the general opinion of all the women in town. They function as a particularly Southern kind of narrative chorus. Presumably, these phrases do not literally refer to every woman, or even every white woman (though they certainly do not include women of color), but rather the genteel white women whose own reputations are impeccable, and who can function as the self-appointed guardians of the town's good name.
In "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in the chapter with that title in The Unvanquished, Bayard says that "all the ladies in Jefferson" (58) - in the second text this is revised to "all the women in Jefferson" (188) - travel out to the Sartoris plantation on several occasions: to confront Drusilla for her unlady-like behavior and to attend the wedding that will ceremonialize her return to their fold. The first time they appear, there are "fourteen of them," though that total includes Martha Habersham (63, 194). They all seem both curious and outraged by what they see.
The Town contains several references to the "ladies" of Jefferson. Gavin refers to "the Jefferson ladies" and their speculation about the reason Young Bayard Sartoris "drove too fast" (149). Charles refers to "the various Jefferson ladies" who for many years "had been locking themselves in the bathroom" to avoid Old Het (241).
in Requiem for a Nun there are several specific references to the "ladies" of a contemporary Jefferson. A hundred years after the town's naming, two ladies clubs argue over whether "to change the name back to Habersham" (7). (This group also appears in "A Name for the City," 202.) And it is only "a few irreconciliable old ladies" - in other words, ladies who have not reconciled themselves to the South's defeat in the Civil War - who refuse to forget the fact that during the war "a United States military force" burned the town Square (37).
