Sewally, Peter, 1803-?

About ten o’clock on the night of Tuesday, June 11, 1836, in New York City, a master mason named Robert Haslem, a white man was walking home after a liaison with a woman he had picked up earlier that evening, as the New York Herald later reported.

On Bleecker Street, Haslem met a black woman, Mary Jones, dressed "elegantly and in perfect style," with white earrings and a gilt comb in her hair.[2] The Herald's rival, the New York Sun, added that Mary Jones also went by the names "Miss Ophelia," "Miss June," and "Eliza Smith." On June 16, five days after Haslem's fateful meeting with Jones, the prisoner, charged with grand larceny, was tried for stealing Haslem's wallet and money. He was not prosecuted for "sodomy," apparently because he had not participated in anal intercourse.

The accused appeared in court, the Sun reported, "neatly dressed in female attire, and his head covered with a female wig," seemingly his outfit when arrested. Did the prisoner choose to be tried in female clothes? Or was this the court's doing? We do not know.

The spectacle of a cross-dressed black man, and of the victimized Haslem, the Herald reported, provided "the greatest merriment in the court, and his Honor the Recorder, the sedate grave Recorder laughed till he cried."

During the trial, the Sun reported, someone in the audience, "seated behind the prisoner's box, snatched the flowing wig from the head of the prisoner." This "excited a tremendous roar of laughter throughout the room." Do not we sense here a note of hysteria, suggesting submerged anxieties about sexuality, gender, and race, each highly charged emotionally and politically?


Sewally's Testimony
A legal transcript of the prisoner's examination recorded the words he uttered in his own defense; a brief, rare, first-person voice from America's sexual past. Certainly, though, the situation of his interrogation skewed his words.[6]

Asked his age, place of birth, business, and residence, he answered: "I will be thirty three Years of age on the 12th day of December next, was born in this City, and get a living by Cooking, Waiting &c and live No. 108 Greene St."

"What is your right name?" he was asked. "Peter Sewally--I am a man," he answered.

Asked "What induced you to dress yourself in Women's Clothes?" he answered:

I have been in the practice of waiting upon Girls of ill fame and made up their Beds and received the Company at the door and received the money for Rooms &c and they induced me to dress in Women's Clothes, saying I looked so much better in them and I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way -- and in New Orleans I always dressed in this way -- .
He added: "I have been in the State service" - his military duty was offered, apparently, as plea for the jury's forbearance.

Asked if he had stolen Mr. Haslem's wallet and money, Sewally answered: "No Sir and I never saw the Gentleman nor laid eyes upon him. I threw no Pocket Book from me last night, and had none to throwaway, and the Pocket Books now Shown me I never Saw before --." Not knowing how to write, Sewally signed his statement with the letter X.

Peter Sewally (fl. 1836–1853) was an American gender-variant prostitute who presented as a woman under names including Mary Jones.[a] According to The Sun, he[b] would wear "a dashing suit of male apparel" in the day, while dressing in feminine attire and wearing a prosthetic vagina at night to solicit sexual services for men and steal their money. He is most well known for being the subject of a trial in 1836 where he was charged with grand larceny for stealing the wallets of men he engaged in sexual acts with. He is considered to be one of the first recorded openly gender-variant or transgender people in New York history.[7][5]

Arrest
On June 11, 1836, a white mason worker named Robert Haslem solicited sexual services from Sewally, who was working under the name Mary Jones.[1] (Both prostitution and interracial sex were legal in New York at the time.[4]) When Haslem returned home, he realized that his wallet containing 99 dollars was stolen and replaced with an empty wallet belonging to another man. When he found and confronted the owner of the replaced wallet, the man at first denied ownership but eventually admitted that he was pickpocketed by Jones as well. The owner of the wallet claimed he didn't want to report the crime to police out of fear of "exposing himself". Haslem reported the crime to the police the next day. Jones was found by police on midnight of the same day. A police officer found Sewally and pretended to be interested in his sexual services, arresting him on Greene Street. When the officer searched her, he realized that Jones had male genitalia. When the officer searched her room, he found several more men's wallets.[1]

Trial
Sewally was tried on June 16, 1836 and appeared in court wearing a wig, white earrings, and a dress. He was subjected to much mockery by the audience of the court for his attire. According to The Sun, a person in the audience grabbed the wig off his head, leading to the court bursting out in laughter.[1]

When asked why he was dressed in feminine attire, he stated:

I have been in the practice of waiting upon Girls of ill fame and made up their Beds and received the Company at the door and received the money for Rooms and they induced me to dress in Women's Clothes, saying I looked so much better in them and I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way—and in New Orleans I always dressed in this way—

Sewally pled not guilty to the charge of grand larceny. He was sentenced to five years of imprisonment at Sing Sing.[5]

The trial was the focus of much sensational media attention, as media tended to report more on his attire than the crime he committed.[8] A lithograph of Sewally was drawn by H. R. Robinson, calling him "The Man-Monster".[1]

Later life and arrests
On August 9, 1845, the Commercial Advertiser published a report about Sewally, referred to as "Beefsteak Pete", being arrested again. Sewally got the nickname from the fact that he wore a prosthetic vagina when engaging in sex with men to trick them into thinking he was anatomically female.[5]

On February 15, 1846, the New York Herald reported that Sewally, also referring to her as "Beefsteak Pete", had been freed from Blackwells Island after being imprisoned for six months for "playing up his old game [and] sailing along the street in the full rig of a female."[1] Sewally was arrested a final time in May 1853.[4]