New York Sunday Herald illustration of Feejee mermaid portrayed as a grotesque sea beast with a gaping mouth full of sharp fangs, wrinkled skin, claw-like hands and skinny arms, a tapering body with scales, fins, and a long tail.

The FeJee Mermaid as portrayed in the New York Sunday Herald. Library of Congress.


Advertisement published in Charleston Courier depicting Feejee mermaid as a beautiful woman with a graceful fish tail and long, flowing hair, delicate features, and a curvaceous body rising from the ocean.

An advertisement for the FeJee Mermaid's appearance in Charleston, South Carolina (following its exhibition at the American Museum), published in the Charleston Courier, January 21, 1843.


In the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, scientists and explorers were still attempting to discover, classify, and explain many phenomena of the natural world. The handful of American museums in this period, notably those of the Peale family, exhibited plant and animal specimens in a purely scientific context. Barnum's FeJee Mermaid exhibit upset the conventions of such museums by deliberately making the mermaid's dubious authenticity the center of attention and controversy. Barnum engaged in elaborate schemes to publicize the mermaid's origins: hiring a man to pose as the British naturalist who had "discovered" the unusual creature; arranging for newspaper reporters to examine the mermaid; planting newspaper items (some of which hinted that the mermaid was indeed a fake); and publicly challenging scientists to prove the fakery they charged. With the FeJee Mermaid, as with so many of Barnum's attractions, hotly debated tales of its acquisition and authenticity were integral to the public's fascination with the object itself.

The two images (above) are illustrations that were used to advertise the FeJee Mermaid in 1842. The first, of a grotesque fish-monkey composite, contrasts sharply with the second, of an alluring sea-siren out of a sailor's dream.