Peter Sewally

Peter Sewally
Lithograph of Mary Jones
Died	Unknown
Other names	Mary Jones
Occupation	Prostitute

Peter Sewally (fl. 1836–1853) was an American gender-variant prostitute who presented as a woman under names including Mary Jones. According to The Sun, he 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.

Arrests and convictions

On June 11, 1836, a man who had solicited sexual services from Sewally – who was working under the name Mary Jones – realized on returning home that his wallet had been stolen. "Mary Jones" was found and arrested, and when searched was found to have male genitalia. Several more wallets were found in his room.

One newspaper discreetly reported (in Latin) that Sewally, "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!!!" According to scholar Jonathan Katz, the "clumsy" Latin says that Sewally "had been fitted with a piece of cow [leather?] pierced and opened like a woman's womb [vagina is the intended word] help up by a girdle"; Katz added that "educated, Latin-reading, upper-class men could apparently contemplate such details without harm; women and lower-class persons of either sex could not." Reports of Sewally's subsequent arrests often referred to him as "Beefsteak Pete" in reference to this prosthesis.

In coverage of his trial, on June 16, 1836, Sewally's feminine attire was given as much or more attention than did the crimes of which he was accused: he reportedly appeared in court wearing a wig, white earrings, and a dress. According to The Sun, someone in the audience grabbed the wig off his head, thereby prompting "a tremendous roar of laughter throughout the room".

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 was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to five years imprisonment at Sing Sing. Soon after, a lithograph was published depicting Sewally in women's clothing and referring to him as "The Man-Monster"

In 1845 the Commercial Advertiser reported that Sewally had been arrested again, and in 1846 the New York Herald reported that Sewally had been released after serving six months for "playing up his old game [and] sailing along the street in the full rig of a female." He was arrested several more times throughout the 1840s and as late as 1853.

In popular culture

The Museum of the City of New York has considered Sewally to be "one of the first known gender variant / transgender people in New York history".

Artist Arthur Jafa featured a re-imagining of what Sewally would have looked like in a self-portrait photograph titled La Scala in his art showcase, A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions.

The Brooklyn Museum commissioned filmmaker Tourmaline to create a short film named Salacia focusing on the life of Sewally. The short was screened at the museum from May 3 to December 9, 2019. The short is currently screened by the Museum of Modern Art as part of their permanent collection.