Platial | Who and What's Nearby
Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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Mid-July, 1842. An English gentleman named "Dr. J. Griffin", a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a remarkable curiosity: A real mermaid supposedly caught near the Feejee Islands in the South Pacific. The press were expecting him, since throughout the Summer they had been receiving letters from Southern correspondents describing the doctor and his mermaid. So when he checked in to his hotel, reporters were waiting for him, demanding to see the mermaid. Grudgingly he obliged. What they saw totally convinced them of the creature's authenticity.
Soon after this, the showman P.T. Barnum visited the offices of the major papers where he explained that he had been trying to convince Dr. Griffin to display the mermaid at his museum. Unfortunately, the doctor was unwilling to do so. So Barnum volunteered to give the papers use of a woodcut of a beautiful, bare-breasted mermaid that he had prepared, since it was now useless to him. The papers (each thinking they had an exclusive) happily accepted the offer, and on Sunday, July 17, mermaid woodcuts appeared in all the papers. Simultaneously, Barnum distributed ten thousand copies of a pamphlet about mermaids throughout the city. The mermaids in the pamphlet were also represented as seductive ocean maidens.
Dr. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at Concert Hall on Broadway.
Huge crowds showed up for the exhibit. Dr. Griffin lectured for these crowds about his experiences as an explorer and described his theories of natural history. These theories were a bit peculiar. For instance, his main argument was that mermaids must be real since all things on land have their counterpart in the ocean — sea-horses, sea-lions, sea-dogs, etc. So therefore, we should assume there are also sea-humans! Meanwhile, the press continued to lavish attention on the mermaid, with rave reviews appearing in papers, such as this from the New York Sun:
"We've seen it! What? Why that Mermaid! The mischief you have! Where? What is it? It's twin sister to the deucedest looking thing imaginable—half fish, half flesh; and 'taken by and large,' the most odd of all oddities earth or sea has ever produced." (The New York Sun, August 5, 1842.)
After the week-long engagement at Concert Hall, Dr. Griffin agreed to allow the mermaid to stay longer in New York City. So it was moved to Barnum's American Museum, where it was exhibited for a month "without extra charge." Ticket receipts at the museum promptly tripled.
Throughout all this, the deception of the public had been three-fold. First, although advertisements had shown the mermaid to have the body of a young, beautiful woman, the creature itself was far less attractive. It had the withered body of a monkey and the dried tail of a fish. As a correspondent from the Charleston Courier put it: "Of one allusion... the sight of the wonder has forever robbed us — we shall never again discourse, even in poesy, of mermaid beauty, nor woo a mermaid even in our dreams — for the Feejee lady is the very incarnation of ugliness." In his autobiography, Barnum later described the mermaid as "an ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive specimen... its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony."
Second, Dr. Griffin was a fraud. He was no English gentleman. In fact, there was no such thing as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Griffin's real name was Levi Lyman, and he was Barnum's accomplice-in-deception. The mermaid's introduction and exhibit had been the brainchild of Barnum all along. Barnum had arranged for letters about Dr. Griffin to be sent to New York papers throughout the Summer, and had then carefully orchestrated the mermaid publicity once Dr. Griffin (Lyman) "arrived" in New York. This had all been done to give the mermaid a veneer of scientific respectability.
Museum-goers examine the Feejee Mermaid. Illustration from Barnum's Autobiography
Finally, the mermaid itself was a fake, and Barnum knew it. He had leased the mermaid from Boston showman Moses Kimball (who, in turn, had bought it from a seaman), but before doing so Barnum had consulted a naturalist to inquire about the mermaid's authenticity. The naturalist had assured him it was quite fake. Nevertheless, Barnum realized that it wasn't important whether or not the mermaid was real. All that was important was that the public be led to believe that it might be real. So he hired a phony naturalist (Dr. Griffin) to vouch for the creature's authenticity, placed pictures of bare-breasted mermaids in the newspapers, and thereby manipulated the public into wanting to see it. As Barnum's biographer A.H. Saxon puts it, the Feejee Mermaid was a classic example of Barnum's ability to "take a mildly interesting object that had been around for some time and to puff it almost overnight into an earthshaking 'event.'
Mid-July, 1842. An English gentleman named "Dr. J. Griffin", a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History, arrived in New York City bearing a remarkable curiosity: A real mermaid supposedly caught near the Feejee Islands in the South Pacific. The press were expecting him, since throughout the Summer they had been receiving letters from Southern correspondents describing the doctor and his mermaid. So when he checked in to his hotel, reporters were waiting for him, demanding to see the mermaid. Grudgingly he obliged. What they saw totally convinced them of the creature's authenticity.
Soon after this, the showman P.T. Barnum visited the offices of the major papers where he explained that he had been trying to convince Dr. Griffin to display the mermaid at his museum. Unfortunately, the doctor was unwilling to do so. So Barnum volunteered to give the papers use of a woodcut of a beautiful, bare-breasted mermaid that he had prepared, since it was now useless to him. The papers (each thinking they had an exclusive) happily accepted the offer, and on Sunday, July 17, mermaid woodcuts appeared in all the papers. Simultaneously, Barnum distributed ten thousand copies of a pamphlet about mermaids throughout the city. The mermaids in the pamphlet were also represented as seductive ocean maidens.
Dr. Griffin agreed to exhibit it for a week at Concert Hall on Broadway.
Huge crowds showed up for the exhibit. Dr. Griffin lectured for these crowds about his experiences as an explorer and described his theories of natural history. These theories were a bit peculiar. For instance, his main argument was that mermaids must be real since all things on land have their counterpart in the ocean — sea-horses, sea-lions, sea-dogs, etc. So therefore, we should assume there are also sea-humans! Meanwhile, the press continued to lavish attention on the mermaid, with rave reviews appearing in papers, such as this from the New York Sun:
"We've seen it! What? Why that Mermaid! The mischief you have! Where? What is it? It's twin sister to the deucedest looking thing imaginable—half fish, half flesh; and 'taken by and large,' the most odd of all oddities earth or sea has ever produced." (The New York Sun, August 5, 1842.)
After the week-long engagement at Concert Hall, Dr. Griffin agreed to allow the mermaid to stay longer in New York City. So it was moved to Barnum's American Museum, where it was exhibited for a month "without extra charge." Ticket receipts at the museum promptly tripled.
Throughout all this, the deception of the public had been three-fold. First, although advertisements had shown the mermaid to have the body of a young, beautiful woman, the creature itself was far less attractive. It had the withered body of a monkey and the dried tail of a fish. As a correspondent from the Charleston Courier put it: "Of one allusion... the sight of the wonder has forever robbed us — we shall never again discourse, even in poesy, of mermaid beauty, nor woo a mermaid even in our dreams — for the Feejee lady is the very incarnation of ugliness." In his autobiography, Barnum later described the mermaid as "an ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive specimen... its arms thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony."
Second, Dr. Griffin was a fraud. He was no English gentleman. In fact, there was no such thing as the British Lyceum of Natural History. Griffin's real name was Levi Lyman, and he was Barnum's accomplice-in-deception. The mermaid's introduction and exhibit had been the brainchild of Barnum all along. Barnum had arranged for letters about Dr. Griffin to be sent to New York papers throughout the Summer, and had then carefully orchestrated the mermaid publicity once Dr. Griffin (Lyman) "arrived" in New York. This had all been done to give the mermaid a veneer of scientific respectability.
Museum-goers examine the Feejee Mermaid. Illustration from Barnum's Autobiography
Finally, the mermaid itself was a fake, and Barnum knew it. He had leased the mermaid from Boston showman Moses Kimball (who, in turn, had bought it from a seaman), but before doing so Barnum had consulted a naturalist to inquire about the mermaid's authenticity. The naturalist had assured him it was quite fake. Nevertheless, Barnum realized that it wasn't important whether or not the mermaid was real. All that was important was that the public be led to believe that it might be real. So he hired a phony naturalist (Dr. Griffin) to vouch for the creature's authenticity, placed pictures of bare-breasted mermaids in the newspapers, and thereby manipulated the public into wanting to see it. As Barnum's biographer A.H. Saxon puts it, the Feejee Mermaid was a classic example of Barnum's ability to "take a mildly interesting object that had been around for some time and to puff it almost overnight into an earthshaking 'event.'
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