The biggest scam of all time
THE “Feejee mermaid” was tagged as one of the world’s biggest hoaxes when it made its appearance in the 1840s.
If you think this is the Fijian mermaid that’s making the rounds on social media - it’s not (smile)
This Feejee mermaid actually preceded our local “mermaid” by 177 years.
It was brought to America by the famous Phineas Barnum, a showman, and businessman remembered for the establishment of the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The movie Greatest Showman (released in 2017) was based on him.
Barnum’s “Feejee mermaid” was described as one of the most well-known sideshow gaffs.
He used the mermaid as the main attraction to his new American Museum which had many characters and objects that boggled the mind and defied human explanation (but of course it was fake and made up).
These included the human skeleton, the 161-year-old woman, Jo-Jo
The dog-faced boy, Lionel the lionfaced man, Siamese twins and even the Fijian cannibals which consisted of three indigenous men and one woman. The three were sold off from Levuka by the Vunivalu of Bau and paramount chief, Ratu Seru Cakobau in the 1870s,- to the Barnum & Bailey circus.
Barnum was slick and reinvented himself many times for his circus.
In 1842, he presented the bizarre mermaid creature described by Barnum himself to be “an ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive specimen … its arms are thrown up, giving it the appearance of having died in great agony.”
The Feejee mermaid had the torso of a monkey and the tail of a fish. Its mouth was wide open with its teeth bared. The right hand was against the right cheek, and the left tucked under its lower left jaw.
Barnum claimed the creature was caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific by a Dr Griffin who was fishing on our side of the waters.
Dr Griffin was said to be a member of the British Lyceum of Natural History when he arrived in New York City with the creature.
It caused an uproar. Barnum’s knack for spinning tales of the unimaginable soon had huge crowds at the Concert Hall on Broadway for a week.
The Feejee mermaid was the talk of the town and in every conversation throughout the city. Everyone was talking about whether it was a real mermaid. They had to see it for themselves.
However, the charade was short-lived, when it was discovered that “Dr Griffin” was only a character portrayed by Barnum’s close friend, Levi Lyman.
Barnum knew the creature was fake, he had leased it from a Moses Kimball.
It was said that the Feejee mermaid was Barnum’s first major hoax. His wily and ingenious methods soon proved profitable and over the years, his circus became known as “The Greatest Show On Earth”.
It was said that two rival newspapers in South Carolina, US began a bitter feud over the Feejee mermaid.
So much so, that had it not been resolved, it would have ended up in a duel.
Editor of the Charleston Courier, Richard Yeadon, reviewed that the mermaid was real, while a local amateur naturalist, the Rev John Bachman, wrote a scathing article in the Charleston Mercury in which he blasted the mermaid as a “crude humbug.”
So where did the Feejee mermaid come From?
Research showed that the creature, in fact, enjoyed quite a colourful history before it came into Barnum’s possession. The creature is believed to have been created around 1810 by a Japanese fisherman for religious purposes.
It was bought by Dutch merchants who then, in 1822, resold it to an American sea captain, Samuel Barrett Eades, for $6000. When Eades died, the ownership of the mermaid passed on to his son, who then sold it to Moses Kimball.
For the next twenty years, the Feejee mermaid was kept at Kimball’s museum in Boston and Barnum’s museum in New York.
In 1859, Barnum took her with him on a tour of London then brought her back to Kimball’s museum. This would prove to be the last place of her known whereabouts.
One theory is that she was destroyed when Barnum’s museum burned down in 1865.
“But this is unlikely since she should have been at Kimball’s Boston Museum at that time.
“More likely, she perished when Kimball’s museum burned down in the early 1880s,” remarked an article.
Wherever the Feejee mermaid is today, it surely caught many the imagination of many. Throughout the years, many replicas were done and kept at museums.
But one thing is for sure - the creature was considered the most famous of several fake mermaids exhibited during the 19th century.