After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Who was the 'Man-Monster' Of New York?

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

On June 16, 1836, in New York City, Mary Jones stood in a courtroom that was a cauldron of hatred. Mary was African American and one of the first known transgender women in US history. Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling the final story from his new book out now: Queer Georgians: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers (published as Queer Enlightenments in the US).Edited by Richie Power. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you!You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everyone. It's us, your hosts Maddie Pelling and Anthony Delaney. But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds of your time. If you're enjoying After Dark and we love you if you are, we would love you just a little bit more. If you could vote for us in the listeners choice category at the British Podcast Awards. So go to the show notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm. They will send you an email. You need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30. If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't, stop what you are doing

right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And this is the second of two very special episodes celebrating the release of a little book called Queer Georgians by our very own, Anthony Delaney. This is a story from the pages of that book all about the so-called man-monster of New York. Anthony, set the scene, please. The 16th of June 1836, Mary Jones, a free black woman, enters a packed New York courtroom. The atmosphere is electric. A wooden floorboards thrum with the depth of men's voices, their laughter and scorn. From the gallery's seats, vultuous members of the public, having been scandalised by the details of the case when it first appeared in the daily papers, peer down on their prey who has now assumed to assign. position. Vicious, prodding things they are as they gulp. Just as well they are kept at a

distance from Mary Jones, for one gets the impression that if they could, they would rip the very flesh from her bones, desperate, rapid and unyielding. For now, though, they are forced to sit, greedily salivating, and watch on. Despite the fact that she is on trial, Mary is an unlikely heroine. Yes, she is a thief, there's no denying that, but sometimes the brutal circumstances one is born into and the dictates of the laws of the day are simply incompatible. In such cases, who are we to judge what Mary Jones might have had to do to eke out a living in a country and in a time that did not see her as entirely human? Today, though, she is every inch a lady. She has composed herself, dressed in her finest garb for the occasion, and her head is held high.

Despite the tumult around her and about her, Mary stands composed and dignified, though the tittering continues. A filthy hand darts forward now and snatches the flowing wig from the head of the prisoner, which in turn excites a tremendous roar of laughter throughout the room. Mary does not flinch. She does not blanche. Why ought she be embarrassed simply because they wished to shame her? It was those around her who had lost their decency. Not she. Mary, keeping her back straight and bending at the knee, lowers herself to the floor, retrieves her good wig and places it once more atop her head. A crown. But to those gathered in the court today, Mary Jones is to be denied the dignity she wears so proudly and proficiently.

Those gathered will titter and snort and prod, snatch and poke. They hate her, hate this stranger before them. It can be the only explanation for their behaviour. But they hate her not because she is a thief, as we have discovered, but because they have read in the newspapers that there is a disparity between Mary Jones's gender and her sex. This, though it was not illegal and was none of their business, business they could not tolerate. This is after dark, and this is the very dark history of how a rabid people sought to bury Mary Jones for transing her gender identity. And, listener,

I am pleased to report, it is also a history of how Mary Jones would not let them. If you don't yet own a copy of queer Georgians, a hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers and homemakers, what are you doing with yourself? It's out now in the UK and Ireland, and it will be out in North America, titled Queer Enlightenment's from the 7th of October. Anthony, how are you feeling about this book being out in the world now? I'm feeling like I should bring you in all my publicity because I'm saying those sentences. all the time. So it's actually interesting here other people say it. I will take that fee, yes. Yes. It's so weird. You know what it's like. We live with these books for literally years. And then... You've been telling me these stories for years. A long, long time. And some of these

stories, not Mary specifically, but some of these have lived even with me since my PhD. So five, six years at this point now. So it is a long time. Listen, I think it's really important that more people know about these queer Georgians, which is the whole point of writing the book. And so we're right on the precipice of that now. So it feels like finally, here you go. Take the histories and do them. Yeah, like you live them. It's so exciting.

And last episode, when we looked at stories from the book, we did the London Molley Houses of the 1720s and arrayed and arrest what that environment looked like. An environment that I think a lot of people actually won't be familiar with. So if you haven't listened to that episode, do go back and listen because there's history there that Feels familiar, but not necessarily quite, as you would expect. So we've had the Mollies. That's kind of the opening of the book. We then have the sample chapter from the audiobook, which is a not so singular case.

That's chapter 10. This, Mary, brings us right to the very end of the book. Oh, she's the final. She's the final chapter. She's 1836, so right on the cusp of that. The long 18th century. Right on the cusp of that Georgian time period. And so we're closing out with Mary.

This will give you just a sample of her incredible. history. We'll go through all the details of the trial and everything because it's after dark and we love a trial. But I just want to make it very clear before I ask you to give us the context, Maddie, that the dark history here is not Mary's history. It's the people around Mary and how they react to her and how actually that, we've talked about ghosts, we've talked about murders, we've talked about all kinds of things on this podcast. Nothing is as scary as a rabid populace chasing down a minority group who are already disenfranchised. And this is so frightening for so many different reasons

just because it displays the cruelty of humanity, barefaced, and we're dealing with a lot of it today as well for our trans brothers and sisters. So that is the dark history here. So let's be very clear about that before we set forward. I'm not going to give a bit of context because I co-wrote this book. Yes, you did. These are notes that Anthony has given me.

Okay, so we're in New York in 1836, and the city's population is nearing 275,000. So it's a booming city. It is, of course, a support city, and it's a hub of immigration. So there's so many people pouring into this space. There is poverty. There's crime. These are all parts of daily life.

This is a city that is working out who and what it is, and it's constantly changing. To speak specifically to Black Life in America in this moment, slavery in New York is gone by this time. But, of course, racism is absolutely entrenched in the society. It's not like it's just disappeared suddenly. Black New Yorkers face job discriminating. They have restricted voting rights. I assume it's just men who can vote in this moment.

Yes. Yeah. So black women not voting. There's frequent harassment, even in vibrant communities, where there is a lot of diversity. This is still the case. United States, more generally in this moment, it's a challenging political moment,

a pretty dark history, actually. So we have Andrew Jackson as the president, and he is pushing these, sound familiar, populist policies that primarily serve rich white men. I don't know why that sounds really. Hugh the woke nonsense in our comment section. Yeah. Don't come for us. We don't care. He is dismantling the National Bank in this moment and he is enforcing the removal of Native Americans off their lands. So there's a lot changing, not for the better. Europe in 1836,

just to give a sense of the other side of the pond, industrial cities in Britain, France, Germany, across Europe are growing really fast. But with that this coming social unrest, we've heard so much about these early decades of the 19th century and the class tension that the Industrial Revolution kind of highlights. Of course, it's always there, but it is absolutely kind of put under a spotlight in this moment. And there's new policing that's aimed at controlling the poor, but also people who are deemed immoral. And that's a label that's going to cover a lot of different things. Comes up a lot in queer Georgians as probably not unsurprising. So this idea of immorality being the lynch pin by which everybody

is being judged. I mean, we're seeing it a lot in today's climate as well, actually. Yeah, absolutely. So give us a sense then. We've started with this really vibrant account of Mary Jones and how she behaves, how she presents herself to the world, but give us a sense of who she is and what we actually know about her. So we're not supposed to have favourites from our books. Oh, I absolutely do. Or are we allowed to do it now. Okay. So Mary is the person from me who, if I think queer Georgians, she pops into my head. She is, just so inspiring in so many different ways. And I hope we'll see that as we go through this episode. But to begin with, we know that Mary Jones was born to another name and gender identity,

and that was Peter Swally. And I use that name because she used that name too. So I just follow Mary's lead. When she names herself, Mary, I go with that. When she names herself, Peter, I go with that. And it's both are necessary for her in different walks of life. Yeah. And I think, you know, often with queer histories, they feel potentially quite modern to us. We don't necessarily have an entrenched sense that people who are queer, who we would call queer now, have existed through the whole of human history. And of course they have. But we have to look at these individuals in the context in which they live. Like Mary is someone who lived in the 1830s. And I just think that's fascinating that you're taking that cue from her and putting her into a context,

whilst also elevating her history as particularly important. Yeah, I mean, and she is. She's so, so important. And for very many reasons, because she's born, we think, we're fairly confident because the court records showed us on the 12th of December 1803. So given the context of New York at this time, there is a very good chance that she is the first member of her family

that's born outside of slavery. So that's also important that this is the context. It's not just the queer context, but it's this history, the black history of America. That's the context that she is also born into. She went by other female names as well as Mary Jones. Mary Jones is the one that appears in the legal documents and that she refers to herself as, but other people referred to her as Miss Ophelia, Miss Jane and Eliza Smith.

Now, the reason there's all of those names is because Mary Jones is also a sex worker. Amongst other things, you see that with a lot of sex workers where the names in this time period will just kind of morph. So depending on who's looking for them, they may be quite different things. Harris's list of Covent Garden Ladies from earlier in the 18th century and this idea of personas that sex workers take on personas and you can shift and change your mask as you go through your career to suit different clients to suit the way that you're working, you know, how you want to present yourself. And I think that's so interesting. And also it says so much about how Mary is being perceived by people externally as well because that's such an interesting history that and you know you talked about the darkness that surrounds the response to Mary later. later on, that there's Mary's history and how she is identifying and how she's presenting, but then there are also these perceptions that other people have of her, both good and bad. And to put those side by side, it's amazing that you have both of those archives, that you can tell those histories together.

Well, it's really interesting that you talk about those perceptions, because at the time, we have accounts that say she lived as Mary by night, but as Peter Swalley during the day. That's not strictly true. And we have archival evidence to show that that's not true. Such a binary idea as well, right? Yes. When she is selling, when she is selling sex, when she is selling sex, she is working on the Bleaker Street area, which was considered a relatively polite neighbourhood.

So she was potentially earning a decent amount of money. So for her, and we know this from her archive, she is probably earning up to about $50 a week, which would far exceed some respectable professions. She'd be earning more than a teacher who's probably earning about $10 a week. So, you know, she's making a living for herself. Do we know in this moment how common trans sex workers were? Is this something that clients were specific? seeking out in this moment? Was it just commonplace?

It's very difficult to say because one of the subtitle of the book is Hidden History of Lovers Lawworkers and Her Workers. Mary wanted her gender identity to be hidden. She wasn't granted that because of the trial that ensues. So those, what we would now term trans sex workers, are not necessarily leaving a record that we can give an account of them. And we know for a fact that most of the men who slept with Mary, and we'll talk about how this happens, didn't know that she hadn't been born a woman. So, yeah, she has some tactics. So we'll talk about them. I have questions. Yes, you will. Wow. They did too. And so she has this incredible history that's, as you say, coinciding the queer history and the black history. And in her own testimony,

which is so vital and so rare, she says that she would attend parties within the black community as herself in female attire, and then she would always dress that way if she was in New Orleans. So the more she was in the black community, she was Mary Jones. That's so interesting. So it's when she had to enter into white spaces or she had to do certain tasks, she would assume the garb of Peter again. But within her own community, that's what for me leads me to say that we would understand Mary as a trans history because where she feels most at home and most comfortable is where

she is her truest form of herself, I think, it's fair to say. And so that's amongst her own community. So we've heard that Mary has these various personas, or at least these monicas that are applied to her, these different names. But there is one other name that is applied to her, which is far less complementary and far more loaded. And that is that of the man-monster. When does that come into play?

So we know that this kicks in when she is arrested for theft, by the way. and we'll go into the details of that trial, but it comes into play then. It's nothing got to do with the trial, really. It is just a way of them in a really salacious way exposing her gender identity while she is on trial for theft or in the run-up to her trial for theft.

And so they, you know, you would like to think that we have passed some of these more grotesque depictions of other human beings. But I think look at the way trans people, trans women in particular, are depicted in black trans women particularly are depicted in modern media coverage as well. I'm not sure how far we can say we've come in many ways. So maybe it shouldn't surprise us, but that is a media given. And it comes from this very famous print, which bear in mind, as Maddie is describing this, underneath the entire time, it says the man monster under what Maddie is about. to describe. The print here, yeah, there's some text underneath an image, a full-length image of

what looks for all intents and purposes, like a black woman. This is Mary in a very pretty 1830s dress that has some sort of pattern. It's kind of a cream dress with these kind of light blue or grey markings on them. She is very respectfully dressed in a lot of finery. She's got gorgeous white gloves on. And in one-hand-hand. she's holding what looks to be maybe is it a pocket book something like that some book yeah yeah she has a belt that is colour coordinated to the pocket book and then in her other hand she has what looks to be like a little purse or a pocket or something which again colour coordinated with this kind of mauve coloured body to it and then some kind of gold handle she's got a gorgeous little brooch

holding the top of her dress together she's got maybe pearl drop earrings maybe shell and some kind of gold headband in her hair and she's got this very elegant updo that you'd expect from the time with these lovely kind of curls around the front of her face and these dainty little feet that you can see

sticking out the bottom of her dress with shoes that have I always love these shoes you can get these now sort of ballet flats with like the straps then go up round the ankle

absolutely love this for her so she looks very fashionable very dignified dignified very respectable she is so that face is so together and so strong. And so coded feminine. It is very feminine coded. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, this is the least monstrous thing I have ever seen in my entire life. And underneath, you then have the text, the man monster in big

capital letters, bold. And then beneath that it says Peter Sawali alias, Mary Jones. And I think this is fascinating because I've been working on hoax women who do hoaxes at the moment. And I remember when we had a conversation, we had an episode about female husbands with Jen Mannion. in their book. They talk about this idea of deception when it comes to trans identities in the long 18th century, this idea that people who are trans are actively and purposefully deceiving other people. And the term alias here is doing a lot of work. And you see it applied to women who are hoaxes as well. This idea of criminally, immorally tricking people, that you are taking on a persona. And we know that Mary is as,

you say, arrested for theft. And there's something here about her whole identity is criminal. It's a lie. And that's how it's being presented that you're seeing this image of this dignified, well-to-do pretty woman. And then you're presented with this idea of the monster beneath. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

That kind of duality is. That's what they want to scare you with. Yeah. That's the whole thing. You don't know. You don't know who's beneath, who might pass her on the street and think, well, she looks nice, but you'll never know. That's the narrative here, isn't it?

Speaking of passing on the street and thinking, oh, she looks nice, let's hop to the 14th of June 1836 when a master mason, Robert Haslam, he has just finished his interludes with another sex worker called Mary Patterson. He had taken her to Vauxhall Gardens, not the one in London, the one in New York, fulfilled the very same purposes exactly, was built in a very similar fashion. And he had gone there that had a lovely evening of sex, of course, but also of fireworks and of music. He had taken Mary Patterson into a secluded box where they had had sex together. And these are spaces that so-called respectable people who are not sex workers go to and have sexual transgression as well, right?

This is kind of a sexy space where you certainly will encounter sex workers, but that's not the only clientele of a pleasure garden. Absolutely. Now, Mary Patterson was another sex worker, but yeah, everyone, very high and low mix of people. Yeah, the whole gamut of society, as long as you can pay the entrance fee. Yes, yeah. But that transaction finishes. And Haslam, leaves Patterson, and soon afterwards, on his way home, he meets another woman. He's got a little stamina. Good for you, Robert. You're off with yourself.

And he engages the services of, well, he approaches Mary Jones. He thinks, well, there's a beautiful woman. I am going to approach her. She claims that she is heading to her aunt's house. And she uses this often with her clients. We're like, oh, I'm just going to my aunt's house. I'm just going to my granny's house, she says sometimes. So it's all very domestic.

Is that a way of staying safe? Is that part of the persona, the character that she's selling? It's part of the character that she's selling. It's part of the fantasy, I think, that she's selling. Very demure. Very demure. Very mindful. Yeah, absolutely.

But they end up in a less demure place because they open in an alley of Green Street. Now, she lives on Green Street, Mary Jones does. And they have sex. No suspicion is aroused. I'll tell you how in a minute. Haslam returns home, and he discovers that he is missing $99 from a pocketbook that he was carrying on him. So Mary is entrepreneurial. amount. I know, I know, I know.

He's missing his whole pocketbook and in there he had a thing for $99. It has been replaced. I don't get this detail, but here we are, nonetheless. It has been replaced with another pocket wallet which contains $200. So actually, he's all bates an order for $200. Robert, be quiet. Keep the money, shush. Okay, he does that

first. He goes home and he's like, that's embarrassing. I can't let somebody know that I engaged the services of a sex worker and I was robbed. So I'm just going to leave it as it is. Yeah. That's what he thinks is going to do. But then compensated.

Well, it's made out to another person. It's a money order for $200. And it's made out in somebody else's name. So he can't really collect it. Okay. So he really is down $99. Yes. And so he goes the next day.

He's like, look, okay, I need to get $99. It's a lot of money, by the way. So he goes the next day to be like, right, Constable Bauer, you're my guy. I'm telling you what happened. I now have this. pocketbook, but it belongs to another man. It's not mine. I have his name here. And Barrow goes, well, we have his name. We can find him, which he does.

Let me guess what they have in common. Yes. And initially, the first guy's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never heard of any of these people. I don't know where my name came from. And then eventually he goes, yes, I was also with Mary Jones in this general vicinity. And yes, she did take my pocketbook. Now, why she put this other pocketbook back in Haslam's pocket? I will never be able to understand that, but she did. So Constable Barron now goes, well, we found this other victim. Now we need to go and find Mary Jones because Mary is who we're looking for. So he and his and they all set for the aunt's house. Yeah, yeah. Well, kind of. They go towards Green Street. And is it his cousin or his brother? One or the other, a family member anyway, he takes with him.

And he says, you need to stay with me and we'll just stake her out and see if we can find her and see if we can approach her, but not engage her services, but like see if she'll try and rob us, maybe. Anyway, somehow they become separated. I have a feeling the brother slash cousin is off doing his own things in his own time and that's fine. But Bauer is still on duty and he's still trying to solve this crime. He eventually comes across Mary and he's like, oh, they start flirting. She's like, oh, I'm going to my granny's house. Why don't you come along with me? And he becomes, you know, this is all in the book in more detail because this is quite an entertaining exchange. He becomes very coy at this point. It seems very genuinely coy where he's,

like, oh, I don't want to actually have sex with this person, but I need to catch her for robbing and all this kind of thing. And he keeps trying to like, oh, no, they go into the alley where Haslam and Mary had gone the night before. And they're together. And, you know, it's all about to get a bit heated. And he's like, no, no, just go up to the top of the road and check that nobody's coming. And he gets her to do that twice because he's like, where is my brother slash cousin? And he doesn't arrive. And he's like, oh, I'm just going to have to apprehend her myself. So he goes, right, we're getting too close now. You're Nick. Okay. Mary panics and she takes pocket wallets out of her dress, throws them on the ground and makes a

run for it. And he catches her and then goes back and retrieves the wallets, one of whom belongs to Haslam. So he has his, he has his proof. So she is then taken to the local watchhouse and she is detained. Okay. So going into police custody in this moment. I'm assuming there's going to be some kind of search of her person given that she had the pocketbooks hidden within her dress, right? This is how we know about Mary Jones because she has searched at the watch house and it's so bizarre because the Sun newspaper at the time, the herald at the time, they report the findings. And this is how Mary gets one of her other names. Mary has fashioned for herself, a girdle of sorts, made from beef.

Okay, this is not where I thought it was going to go. Yeah. So made from beef, it's fastened with a kind of a belt facility around her groin. And so the men that she's engaging in sex within the alleys think that she has a vagina. And so these are details that are printed in one of the, is it the sun? And yeah, the Sun newspaper at the time gives this detail, but it's all in Latin. So most of the readers won't be able to know what they're saying. So thankfully, we can translate that now and we know it's basically that it describes in detail what she's where.

It's in the book. You can go and read it there. And the Sun is less explicit, but it does say that she has most effectually disguised her sex, is what they say. so she has been quite determined in her work as a sex worker and she has fascinated by this because it's incredibly creative and entrepreneurial how common do you think this was I mean I guess we'll never know never heard of it before that's the only time I've ever come across this in any of the work I've done on sex workers or on people who have trans their gender identity I've never come across that detail but if I were to hazard a guess Mary is not the first or only person doing

this there will be a network I would imagine based on the wider archival scope a network of what we would now term trans sex workers who are doing similar things and have shared this information amongst them. That, to me, seems like the most likely thing. Okay, so they discover this situation. Yes. I mean, once they've got over the initial surprise, what is the response? So you can imagine it's outrage and it's all of these things,

but one of the things that I found most fascinating, and actually I alluded to another nickname she gets because of that. So because the male name that she uses is Peter Sorelli, she becomes known as Beefsteak Pete after this as well. So it's, you know, they go from. the headlines with this. So one of the most surprising reactions, which is what you asked about what happens after this, is that she starts getting formally processed through the legal system. Okay. And this, I did not expect. Throughout almost every document, bar one, and we're

going to talk about that document in a minute, she is referred to as either Mary Jones and Peter Swally or just Mary Jones. So here we have this, as far as we've known before, trans identities in legal cases in the United States didn't come into effect. I think it's until the 1960s, so the 20th century. Here we have legal processing using Mary Jones' female name either alongside, granted,

or instead of Peter Sorelli. And I think that's really interesting. They do process Mary Jones, not just Peter Soali. That's interesting that she's acknowledged. There's a legal recognition of her identity here. But what I found when I was going through all of these documents is also really telling. And it's one of the reasons why I decided to write queer Georgians because it's not that we didn't know these histories. We don't know these histories in a lot of cases. It's that these histories have been deliberately taken away from queer people. They have been obscured. And I have an

example that comes up in Mary's archive, which I would love for you to describe so we can see this in kind of firsthand. Okay, so I'm looking at a photograph of a document on yellowing paper and there is printed text. It's a form that needs to be filled in. And then there is handwritten text where the form has been filled. So it says city and county of New York, the jurors of the people of the state of New York

in and for the body of the city and county of New York upon their oath. Present that. And then there's a name and we see written in Inc. Peter Sawali. And then there is another part of the name, which is faded, possibly erased. And beneath that, the form continues. Late of the first, does that say ward of the city of New York in the county of New York aforesaid, Labra, otherwise called Mary Jones. So you would skip that last sentence if you were to just look at this particular entry. But if you look up ahead where you said it looks like something has been erased.

Yes, where it says Peter Swally in ink, handwrittening. And that is the official naming line. So that's where the person gets officially named. What the labour otherwise known as Mary Jones is the description. There has been a detail there. And that detail was Mary Jones's name, alias Mary Jones, on the official naming line of this document. But somebody has gone back in. And we don't know when exactly whether this happened in the age.

1830s, whether it happened in the 20th century, but at some point somebody has gone in and tried to erase. And you can barely make it out, Maddie. You kind of see the shape of the name there. Now you've said it says alias Mary Jones. I can see that. But the paper itself, I mean, it's puckered and it's a lighter color like it has been rubbed out, almost with an eraser or... That's what I imagine this is an eraser job. Yeah. And so they are literally trying to erase Mary Jones from the historical record. I mean, it's so amazing here that you have a visual, literal material representation of the erasure of a queer person. And it's not the only one.

There are other examples in the book and there are other examples beyond the book. It just goes to show that if anybody ever tries to say there were no queer people at this time or they didn't, you know, sure, nobody called themselves queer at this time, but nobody called themselves Georgians either. And nobody takes issue with the Georgians part. This is just what we do as historians to try and tell these histories.

And do you know what? It makes me think as well that this might be a later erasure because you said in the other contemporary documents that often Mary's called Mary and sometimes she's called Peter and it can be interchangeable. They understand it in those terms that she is using both.

And to me, this potentially might be a later... Do you know, that's literally my gut instinct. We don't know, we haven't dated the erasure. We can't do that. But that's my good instinct to that. It's actually probably a much later erasure. I don't know why I think that based on nothing only good instinct, as I say.

but that is. Good instinct and the evidence that her name is elsewhere used without question. True, true, true, true. But, you know, we do forget in this that she has robbed Robert Haslam. Yeah, she has committed some crimes. Yes. So there is going to be a trial. She is not on trial for her gender nonconformity.

She's not on trial for her identity, but she is on trial for theft. You wouldn't necessarily know it, though. So we are going the very next day, the 16th of June, 1836, this is the core of the Grand Sessions, where New York, obviously, she enters as she had been dressed the night before. And that is what you described. That beautiful dress really well put together. Presumably minus the beef this time.

There's no comment on the beef on the trial day. No, that's absolutely true. The gallery is packed because this has already gotten around parts of the city that this woman is going to be tried. And, you know, this is less than 24 hours later. And I suppose, you know, thinking about that idea of deception, as perceived in the press, as this narrative that's put forward, that this is someone who has tricked straight men into having sex with her when they didn't know who she really was. And I suppose so many men are coming to this trial, not only because it's a sensational story in the press, but also because maybe a lot of them do use sex workers in that area and, you know, want to kind of go and see what. the situation is and what the truth is and maybe what they've been getting into, literally.

It's interesting. They have this thing where they see her as a joke. Yes. They undermine her by positioning her as a joke. So much so that the official court recorder is recorded as having laughed until he cried when she appeared in court. Now, we talked about where the dark history is lying in this thing. That feels very mean to me. Yeah. You talked to the opening narrative about people snatching the wig off Mary's head. There's a sort of visceral, brutish desire to strip her down. To tear you apart. Yeah, and to take the accoutrements of femininity, as understood by everyone in that room, away from her.

And not only because she has transed her gender identity, but because she is black and has transed her gender identity. This is the meeting point of something very what they see as something that needs to be undermined in their, Yes. And I'll say that Mary as a black trans person occupies a part of society and as a sex worker as well, a part of society that is frequented by all manner of people. People have paid for her services. But there's no desire to acknowledge that. She occupies a space where people don't necessarily want to know. She's, you know, in their eyes, very lowly and unimportant. And so to be presented with the reality, the truth of who this person is, that, you know, ordinary men have been dealing with, there's, again, it's a sort of a shock factor, right? That people want to come and see it's like, and again, I'm talking in terms of how they would understand it, but it's sort of like picking up a rock and looking underneath, you know, sort of peering in all, you know, looking, seeing the reality in all its, I would say glory here, but in all its...

They weren't basking in that glory. The naked truth of it is shocking and troubling to the people who have. hold more power than Mary in the society? The great thing about this trial, if there is a great thing, is that we get her testimony and we hear that she, and this is probably not true by this point, I think from what we can discern it was true at some point, but that she made her living from waiting, so as a waiter, when she was Peter Swally. So Peter Swally was a waiter. Mary Jones is not. So waiting for black freemen in New York was a very customary way for them to equilibrium.

at that point. But she was asked, despite the fact that her gender identity is not on trial, she was asked why she presents as she presents. And she says she did that because the other sex workers that she was around, quote, they induced me to dress in women's clothes saying I looked so much better in them. Now, I think it's a very simplified acknowledgement of what has happened here in terms of Mary's identity. And it also puts the autonomy on other people, not on Mary herself. Yeah, because you have to consider that the context of this is trial, right? But the other thing about it is it also hints at community. It also hints of this kind of female community that Mary's part of.

Totally. Totally. Totally. Like, and it's that female community that she finds herself part of. And this is where she also says that she always dressed this way in New Orleans and attends parties among the people of my own colour. Those are her words in female attire. But again, it's very difficult to sometimes remember.

She is not on trial here for her gender presentation. that is not illegal. And that was commented upon at the time. It was said, she can do what she wants. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was not what was on trial. She can do what she wants legally, but socially.

In terms of the media, they're not letting her away with it. And it is the main concern of this trial in many ways, despite the fact, again, that that's not what she is on trial for. She denies the fact that she robbed these things. I mean, you know, I am, again, team Mary all the way. But, come on. They found it on you. You threw away one of the pocketbooks. So the evidence is strong. And I suppose it's not surprising that she is found guilty. The jury deliberated for a very short amount of time. And then she is sentenced to time in Sing Sing Prison, which is known as, you know, it's like New York's Newgate, I guess. It's the House of Fear. This is an Institute of Correction. And the inmates are laboring there in stone quarries under the Auburn system. So that meant, when you hear of like chain gangs, they're, they're manacled together. So they have to go in lockstep.

They have to, you know, this is a harsh, harsh, harsh system. Yeah, and a complete stripping back of any personal identity whatsoever for any inmate. Yeah, it is yet another step in the dehumanizing of this person from the discovery to the man-monster label, to beefsteak peat, to the trial where the wig is ripped off her head. And now we're in Sing-Sing, where everybody. not just Mary is being dehumanized on different levels for, you know, okay, yes, she, again, she stole the things. But, you know, we're eking out a living here. Not the worst crime being committed in New York City in this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So we're eking out a living and this is what she has to do. But that, I am so glad to say, and this was my happiest discovery in the thing, is not the end of Mary Jones. How many times on episodes and After Dark we go, and that's the last we know of them. Not Mary Jones. Tell me more. She does not go down easily. Something told me she would not.

No, she comes back again and again and again. She often gets targeted under theft laws, grand larceny laws again. Mary, learn your lesson. She sticks to her trade and various times in the future under vagrancy laws. Now, vagrancy laws were a bit of everything and a bit of nothing at the same time. People could be arrested for being somewhere they shouldn't have been. At a time of day, they shouldn't have been. And a lot of people who trans their gender identity...

are picked up in this way under vagrancy laws. Interesting. They usually say, oh, it's because you were drinking. Oh, you were standing there for too long or whatever it is. It's never, we have a suspicion about your gender identity. It's a kind of catch-all to organise, remove process, people who are marginal in society, right? It's not necessarily people who are living full-time on the street. Absolutely.

And we know for a fact that Mary continues to present as female. after her prison sentence in Sing Sing. So, you know, Mary is surviving on these streets when she's out there. In 1844, and this is so interesting to me, she just keeps giving archival gems. So hold on, 1844, so like 20 years? No, so 10 years. Eight years. 1836.

Math. Okay. She's arrested person at 1836 and then 1844. I'm with you. So we're eking out of the Georgians now, but I just think it's important so we get a bit of a context of the rest of her life. She's arrested in 1844. with a man named John Williams alias Joseph Linus.

So you're talking about these aliases and John slash Joseph is not the most trusted man in the entire world. He also has some dodgy stuff going on. Although he is apparently a genteel looking fellow that is noted at his arrest

but he has got his own criminal record. When he's arrested, there is what seems to be an unusual document but in these queer histories in these trans histories particularly this is something that keeps coming up. This is something that keeps coming up. This document, this incredible document I'm so excited, is found on Peter, Mary, presenting as Peter in this moment.

Yes, I just haven't come across anything like this before. It says, I Joseph Linus do hereby certify that I have taken an oath in the presence of Theodore Augustus Jackson, that I will be a friend to Peter Sawara Lee, spelled wrong, till death separates us. He giving me the privilege to marry the girl of my choice, provided she is. beyond doubt virtuous. I also swear to tell him everything of the least moment that transpires concerning either of us through life. And this I do voluntarily swear before God and man, signed Joseph Linus, October 3rd, 1844. Have you ever seen anything like that before? No. I'm sorry if we're getting a bit historian-y, and this.

But I mean, this is amazing. So, I mean, obviously, you have the language in there till death separates us, these feel like wedding vows, but also this gives a sense of maybe how some queer relationships may have organised themselves in that he's dedicating himself till death parts us as a friend to Peter, and I think friends doing heavy lifting there, let's be honest. But then saying, I'm allowed, Peter's allowing me to go and marry a woman, as long as I tell him everything that transpires between the two of us. And she has to be a virtuous woman. So there is a potential inference there that it's not a sexual relationship.

It's not a sexual relationship. Okay. And I will tell him everything of the least moment that transpires between us because there's not going to be much. This was found on him and printed in the newspaper. So I'll caveat that by saying this is a printed version. This has been through lots of different hands. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

But there is a similar document found on George Wilson, who is what we would now term a trans man. And that is found on him when he is arrested for his vagrancy. And this is another. person in the book. There's another person in the book. So very similar document. I just wonder if there are coping mechanisms that queer people in New York specifically, I don't see this in England, but if in New York specifically there are coping mechanisms that people are employing just in case they're taken up or I don't know. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's just really fascinating. Is it a coping mechanism or is it also a way of structuring your relationship, of giving it some officiality in a way that isn't available to queer people at this time in the same way that it is to heterosexual. sexual people getting married. I think all of the above. Either way, I should point out, Mary's arrested again because of this discovery

and not because of this discovery, but because of the theft that they're both involved in. And she goes to prison. In 1845 and 1846, she goes to prison again on separate occasions. And later that same year, twice in 1846, in fact, she has taken up again for parading in women's clothing.

Wait, so this is illegal by the 1840s? Just under the vagrancy. So it's not illegal. It's just under the, Vagrancy Act. Again, it's just the description of parading. She was parading in women's clothing at the time under the Vagrancy Act. I mean, that's fascinating, isn't it? It's sort of an issue, but not really. Well, they describe her as, yeah, parading, but they also say she is tricked out in female apparel of the most fashionable style and cut sporting the newest

shaped hat. So that's in 1840s. Career and theft's paying off very well, Mary. Why do she keep dressing as a woman? They see it. Why does she keep dressing as a woman? And one newspaper says it like this. It's because her ruling passion appears. is too strong for punishment to subdue. So her ruling, they're almost saying, she has no choice in this. Yeah. That's, you know, not in so many words,

but that is what they are saying that whatever her ruling passion is, even punishment can't subdue it. I mean, they're talking about the theft there as well. But, you know. I find this history so fascinating because on the one hand, you talked about this very dark history

and at the trial, this attempt to humiliate her, to strip her down, you know, literally taking the wig off her head and to sort of, get to the bottom of who this trickster is, like she's betrayed all these men that she's been having sex with, and that's unacceptable as a society, even though, you know, the moral questions at the time around sex work very much shelved when it's not convenient for men

who actually want to buy sex, you know, all that aside, there's this kind of rush to punish and humiliate her, but also what we see in the written archive in the newspapers that you're talking about in some of the record keeping, not all of it, is maybe not an acceptance of how she presented and what her identity was, but an understanding of why she did that and that that was a fluid thing throughout her life that changed. And that's just how it was. Yeah. I mean, maybe I would caveat the word understanding and say acknowledgement, that they maybe don't understand it, but they're going, I have to acknowledge. that Mary Jones is here.

And that's the last thing we see is Mary Jones in 1846, 10 years after her first arrest. Wearing her best outfit. She's living her best life, wearing her best outfit, wearing the best hat. And I think this is why I love Mary so much. And this is why she is who lingers with me outside of these pages when I'm in life generally. Because we see the attempt to claw her down as you're just describing and to put her down and to strip her away and to all of those things. And we see very blatant racism. We see very blatant what we would now term transphobia

and the attitudes towards the working classes. Obviously, that's totally inseparable in this case from issues around race. But she, for me, just becomes the most visible column of resistance and resilience. She has determined to carve out a place for herself in a world that does not wish. her to find that place and she will not allow them to grind her down and that I mean sometimes I think I'm paraphrasing myself here now but I think the way I kind of end the book is by going sometimes

just keeping on keeping on is how you make history and Mary Jones is a really good example of that like she is not fighting wars she is not changing legislation she is not uprooting systems of government. She just gets back up every single time. And that is the history I'm interested in. Well, I think that's a perfect place to end. Anthony Delaney, guest of After Dark, where can people purchase this excellent book? You can get Queer Georgians, wherever you buy your books online, in stores, wherever it might be. If you're listening in the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth, then it's out now. If you're listening in North America, then it's released on the 7th of October and is called Queer Enlightenment. And yeah, go and find out a little.

bit more about Mary and her comrades. It's out. It's out now, Maddie. Please do. And, you know, please support us by buying Anthony's book, you know, especially if you enjoy the podcast. You've been enjoying it for the last two years. It really, really, really, really helps us to keep working, to keep writing books if people buy them. So please, please, please. If you enjoy our work at all, do go out and do that. Thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. You can now find us on YouTube. You can watch our faces talking into a camera if you have ideas for episodes, in particular queer histories. I think we'd like to cover more queer histories. If you want to get in touch with us with a queer history you'd like to hear about or any other topic, you can do so

after dark at history hit.com. Thank you.