A Female Sailor

Background: This article describes the trial and conviction of Charles Williams, a navy veteran. Found guilty of theft, Williams was sentenced to hard labor at the newly -opened New York City jail on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), where Peter Sewally was also held. As the author notes, prison labor was segregated by sex; “getting out stone,” or digging and carrying stones to use in construction of facilities on Blackwell’s Island, was reserved for men. Although Williams’s crime and trial occurred in New York City, the story of the arrest was reprinted in newspapers elsewhere. This account, which originally appeared in the Commercial Advertiser (New York) later was printed in a newspaper from Alexandria, Virginia.

Female Sailor.—A black, named Charles Williams, aged 26, dressed in Seamen’s clothes, was convicted at the Special Sessions, on Tuesday, of stealing swine, and was sentenced to four months imprisonment at the Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island, and made to get out stone. While undergoing a metamorphosis of clothing by the officers of the prison, it was discovered that the sailor was a female. She states that she was born in Boston but brought up in Providence, from which place she went several voyages to sea, and was recently discharged from one of our national vessels.

The keeper was induced to disregard so much of the sentence as related to the convict being made to get out stone; instead of which, he directed that she should be habited as the rest of her sex, and put at the labour usually required them in that institution. It is said to be a moot case among the lawyers, whether the sentence can be legally executed.—N. Y. Com. Adv.

Source: “A Female Sailor,” Alexandria Gazette, February 4, 1834, p. 1; from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1834-02-04/ed-1/seq-3/.