Illustration of a wrinkled, hunched Heth wearing a shapeless dress and an “Aunt Jemima” style head kerchief being studied by a group of suspicious Boston socialites. In the foreground a woman appears to be questioning or confiding in a tall man in a tall hat, presumably Barnum.

This image of the exhibition of Joice Heth comes from Barnum's 1855 autobiography The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself. In the book, it illustrates a passage describing how a Boston woman closely examined Heth to determine if she was a machine or a human. Heth, in the background, looks far less grotesque than she did in the poster which Barnum used to advertise her in 1835.