1836 – 1853
Mary Jones is considered one of the first recorded gender-variant individuals in United States history, her story recorded in early 1800s court documents. While Mary has only been recently interpreted as transgender, she remains crucial evidence that gender-expansive identities have always existed.
Early Life and Origins
It is believed that Mary Jones was born in New Orleans under the name Peter Sewally, according to penny press newspapers like The Sun and New York Herald. However, Mary wasn’t well-received by journalists and was targeted with hostile newspaper coverage that published her story for profit rather than factuality.
Due to misinformation, it’s not clear where exactly Mary is from. Mary originally stated she was from New York City, which is why some sources claim she was born there in 1803, but she gave different origins and ages during other court appearances. Despite this, Mary usually mentioned New Orleans during her testimonies.
Government census indicates that Mary was a skilled craftsman, although she worked and dressed as a man during the day as a waiter and cook. Mary was believed to be illiterate with little formal education, evidenced by her inability to sign documents during the trial, and claimed to have served a short time in the United States military.
The Arrest and Trial of Mary Jones
Mary was employed as a sex worker in Lower Manhattan, like many ostracised communities, using sex to survive. In 1836, Mary was accused of stealing a client’s wallet, which garnered immense media attention.
The client in question, Robert Haslem, reported the theft to local law enforcement. Officers followed up on Haslem’s report and found Mary with several stolen wallets in her possession. Despite dressing in feminine clothes and using a prosthetic vagina for work, police determined that Mary had male genitalia.
After having sex with Mary, Haslem realised his wallet had been switched with a stranger’s and a strange bank order for $200 – and he was missing his own wallet and $99. Haslem tracked down the wallet’s owner, who had a similar experience with Mary the night before. Reportably, the other man never came forward because he didn’t want others to know he willingly had sex with a Black sex worker.
Haslem confessed and reported the theft to Constable Bowyer the next day, who found Mary that evening. Bowyer approached Mary undercover, who led him to the same alley that she had taken Haslem to previously to conduct “business.” Mary gave quite the “tussle” during her arrest, and allegedly dropped multiple stolen wallets during the altercation. One of the found wallets was Haslem’s, which provided sufficient evidence to detain Mary.
While Mary was kept at the closest watch tower, law enforcement searched Mary’s apartment and found a trunk filled with stolen wallets and bank notes. Haslem was only able to identify a few of the notes as his, which led the police to believe Mary was hiding more money on her person that required a physical examination.
“Bowyer also discovered,” wrote The Sun regarding the arrest, “to sustain his pretension, and impose upon men as sexus femineus, fabrefactus fuerat pertio bovillis, (cara bubulu) terebratus et apertus similis matrix muliebris, circumligio cum cingulum!!!” This line birthed Mary’s nickname as “Beefsteak Pete.”
Note: In Jonathan Katz’s review, he suggests that The Sun purposely wrote part of the story in Latin to censor the story from uneducated readers. It roughly translates that Mary “had been fitted with a piece of cow leather pierced and opened like a woman’s womb, held up by a girdle.” Sensationalised accounts claim that Mary filled the prosthetic with beef to mimic a vagina.
Mary was charged with grand larceny five days later, on June 16th, 1836 – but she was notably not charged for sodomy since Haslem stated they did not participate in anal sex. Mary appeared before the court dressed elegantly as a woman, presumably in the same outfit she was arrested in. However, her attire did not make her sympathetic to the court and instead provided “the greatest merriment in the court, and his Honor the Recorder, the sedate grave Recorder laughed till he cried.” At some point, someone sitting behind Mary “snatched the flowing wig from the head of the prisoner,” which invoked “a tremendous roar of laughter throughout the room.”
Finally, Mary spoke before the court: “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, and live on 108 Greene Street.”
“What is your right name?” asked the court during Mary’s examination.
“Peter Sewally,” Mary answered. “I am a man.”
“What induced you to dress yourself in Women’s Clothes?”
“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.”
By the next day, penny press newspapers had published the trial and Mary Jones’ “practical amalgamation,” which was the common phrase of the period to refer to interracial relationships. Mary was presented as uniquely eccentric – but not a sodomite.
The jury ruled against Mary, returning a guilty verdict that sentenced Mary to five years of hard labor in Sing Sing State Prison for grand larceny. HR Robinson drew a lithograph of Mary Jones titled “The Man-Monster,” which created a stark contrast between the “Man-Monster” title, Mary’s sexual deviance, and how completely unthreatening and normal Mary physically looked.
“Despite its salacious title (and many papers’ reluctance to print it), the lithograph portrays Jones as nothing more or less than an elegant black woman” (NYC Department of Records and Information Services). “This apparent discrepancy points to an issue seen throughout Mary’s case: It is clear from the attention given to Mary’s gender in court records and in the media that her gender presentation was considered not only unusual, but indicative of some larger character flaw.”
Mary was sensationalised and quickly forgotten by the public – although she did come up again. In 1845 and 1846, Mary was repeatedly arrested and sentenced for “playing up [her] old game, sailing along the street in the full rig of a female.”
Mary’s last recorded words come from her 1848 case against Michael Bonney. Introducing herself as Julia Johnson, Mary stated, “I was born in Jersey, I am twenty-seven years old, I am married, my husband has gone on a trading voyage to New Orleans and other places. I live in the rear of No. 70 or 72 Sullivan Street, and do day’s work for a living.”
After 1848, nothing more is known about Mary Jones or her aliases. While the public was fascinated with her life, the media made no attempts to record Mary’s experiences beyond sex work.
Historical Interpretation and Erasure
Historian Timothy R. Gilfoyle recovered information on Mary Jones in the 1990s in his research on sex work in antebellum New York City. In City of Eros: New York City, prostitution, and the commercialization of sex, Gilfoyle argued that Mary was a gay cisgender man who chose to work as a woman as part of NYC’s larger brothel culture.
Jonathan Ned Katz interpreted Mary similarly, suggesting that Mary “acted like a woman” and formed a community as strategic moves to survive in a hostile world. For decades, Mary was written as a cisgender man due to her anatomy and work.
It wasn’t until the research of Tavia Nyongo and C. Riley Snorton that scholars began to consider whether Mary was genuinely gender-diverse or transgender. While many cisgender gay men crossdressed to engage in same-sex activities at the time, that doesn’t automatically mean Mary was cisgender.
Neither Gilfoyle nor Katz was necessarily wrong in their interpretations. Transgender is a fairly modern word, and our complicated understanding of gender diversity didn’t begin until the early 1900s. Mary did not identify as transgender, but neither did Elagabalus or Chevalière d’Éon – but they would have likely identified with the notion behind “transgender.”
The majority of history has been reviewed under a straight cisgender lens. History is written by the victors, and the victors have never been amicable towards the marginalized identities they moved to suppress.
Mary spent over seven years at New York’s most notorious prisons, including Blackwell and Sing Sing. Despite everything, Mary repeatedly returned to the same neighborhood in women’s attire under feminine aliases even when conforming to cisgender standards would have been safer.
Court and census records identified Mary as a skilled craftsperson who could have worked an honest profession as a man and pursued sex with men. Alternatively, Mary could have become a known “female impersonator” in a safer and more socially accepted environment. Mary could have also moved to a new city or neighborhood where she wouldn’t be known – but she did none of these things.
Bibliography & Further Reading
“Beefsteak Pete Arrested.” National Police Gazette, 3 Apr. 1858. Transgender Digital Archive, www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
“Court of Sessions: Yesterday.” The Sun [New York], 17 June 1836, no. 869, p. 2. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Microfilm.
“General Sessions, Thursday: A Good One.” The New York Herald, 17 June 1836, vol. 2, no. 84, p. 1. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Online Database.
“I AM ME Initiative.” “Mary Jones (Deadname: Peter Sewally).” I AM ME Initiative, www.iammecorp.org/post/mary-jones-dead-name-peter-sewally. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Crenshaw, Madeleine. “Meet the Rebellious Women of 19th Century NYC.” Untapped New York, 20 July 2018, gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/meet-the-rebellious-women-of-19th-century-nyc.
Gilfoyle, Timothy R. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920. W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
McConville, Mike, and Chester L. Mirsky. Jury Trials and Plea Bargaining: A True History. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005.
Mellison, J. “What Mary Jones Teaches Us About the Racist Roots of Transphobia and the Survival of Black Trans Women.” jmellison.net. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Melville, Herman. Redburn: His First Voyage. 1849. Harper & Brothers, 1849.
New York City Department of Records and Information Services. “The People vs. Mary Jones.” NYC Municipal Archives Blog, 3 Aug. 2022, www.archives.nyc/blog/2022/8/3/the-people-vs-mary-jones.
New York Herald. 1836–1837. New York City. Penny press coverage of The People v. Mary Jones.
Nyong’o, Tavia Amolo Ochieng’. The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory. University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Old Pros Online. “Mary Jones.” Old Pros Online, oldprosonline.org/mary-jones/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
OutHistory.org. “Sewally (Mary Jones): The Man-Monster.” OutHistory, outhistory.org/exhibits/show/sewally-jones/man-monster. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Sun. “Court of Sessions.” The Sun [New York], 17 June 1836, p. 2. Originally published in Latin. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
The People v. Mary Jones. 1836. New York Court of General Sessions. Court records reproduced in secondary archival sources.
The Sun (New York). 1836–1837. New York City. Penny press coverage of Mary Jones’s arrest and trial.
Wright, D. Performance records referenced in Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. University of Illinois Press, 1998.