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Even before Captain Eades arrived in London with his mer-maid in September 1822, it had already landed in the paperswith a splash. One respected church leaderwho saw the mermaid while it was in transitgave it his endorsement in a widely-reprintedletter: "I have today seen a Mermaid.... Ihave always treated the existence of thiscreature as fabulous; but my scepticism isnow removed." He described the mummifiedmermaid's monkey-like upper body, and saidthat its lower body "resembles a large fish ofthe salmon species."

The mermaid was a star before it wascarried off the boat. Eades rented alarge room in London to show the mermaid,and ran newspaper advertisements with illus-trations, inviting the already curious public tobring their money and pay to see

"THE MERMAID!!!—The wonder of the world, the ad-miration of all ages, the theme of the Philosopher, theHistorian, and the Poet. .. .every day, Sundays excepted,from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. Ad-mittance One Shilling."

For a couple of months, paying customers fiocked to seethis remarkable sight—hundreds more every day. The papersand even some naturalists treated it as perhaps the real thing,with the London Times saying "There is certainly no percep-tible addition or juncture of discordant parts for any purposeof deception." But this warm reception was not to last.

In November, the mermaid was dragged into court.Eades had sold the Pickering to buy the mermaid, butit wasn't exactly his ship. He only owned a smallshare. The other seven-eighths of the Pickering be-longed to a man named Stephen Ellery—andEUery wanted his money back. But when he con-fronted Eades, the captain threatened to take themermaid and leave the country. Ellery had a lawyerask the court to stop Eades from selling or leavingwith the mermaid. The judge in the case found this hi-larious. "What is it?" he asked, as though he had notquite heard right. "A mermaid?" The lawyer calmlyreplied, "Whatever it might be, it cost the plaintiff1,200 [pounds]." The judge ordered Eades amdthe mermaid to stay put.

At the same time, scienceand the media began to turnagainst the mermaid. Nat-uralist William Clift ofthe Hunterian Mu-seum wrote, "Cap-

tain Eades permitted me to examine it very minutely, and Iimmediately saw it was a palpable imposition and soon madeout the manner in which it had been prepared." Although itwas an exceptionally well-crafted fake, it was of course a taxi-dermie hoax made from the remains of a fish amd an ape ormonkey. "We lament.. .to tell our readers, that if they go tosee it.. .it must be to observe how admirably such a deceptioncan be executed," declared one paper that had at first fallenfor the hoax. "So much for this dead mermaid," said the Lon-don Times.

The Second Life of the Captain's Mermaid

The big show was over. While the captain's mermaidtoured smaller English towns for a couple more years, it at-tracted smaller and smíJler crowds who believed it less andless. Eventually it faded from sight. But it was not lost—andas it would happen, its greatest role was still to come.

Eades went back to work sailing ships for Ellery to pay backthe money he had "borrowed" for the mermaid. When thecaptain passed away, he left the mermaid to his son, who inturn sold it to a Boston museum owner. In 1842, that museumowner brought it to the man who would make it a legend.

The Prince of Humbugs

Phineas T. Barnum was the greatest American showman ofthe nineteenth century. His business was entertainment—cir-cuses, carnivals, museums, and exhibitions—and his geniuswas publicity. Although he was a skeptical person himself, hedidn't much care if the things he exhibited were genuine. All

that mattered was that people pay to seethem (and not demand their money

back afterward). If people thoughtof him as a playful and devious

trickster, so much the bet-ter. "The titles of 'hum-bug,' [hoaxer] and the'prince of humbugs,"'said Barnum, "were

first applied to me bymyself."

When Barnum saw themermaid, he knew it was a goldmine. It was just the thing todraw curious crowds to hisAmerican Museum in New York

City. "No doubt" the mermaidwas created by an artist.

likely in Japan, said Barnum. It was clear to him that it was"well calculated to deceive." But it was a convincing hoax,which to Barnum was as good as the real thing. Hemade a deal to lease the mermaid, and then got towork to make it a star attraction. It involvedtricks so sneaky that even the Prince ofHumbugs later said, "I confess, I am notproud."

First, he needed a fake scientist totell people that the mermaid wasreal. (This same trick has been usedin other big business mermaidhoaxes as recently as this year—see pages 72-73.) Over a periodof weeks, letters from Alabama,South Carolina, and WashingtonD.C. appeared in different NewYork papers, each talking about local newsin their areas. Each also happened to men-tion a certain "Dr. Griffin" of the "Lyceum ofNatural History in London" who had anamazing specimen in his possession.Could it be a real mermaid?

These letters about Dr. Griffin wereall written by Barnum himself. He mailedthem to helpers in other towns, who thenmailed them back to the newspapers in NewYork City. Neither Dr. Griffin nor his museumexisted—but a "Dr. Griffin" soon checked intoa hotel in Philadelphia nonetheless. He was re-

ally a man named Levi Lyman, who secretly worked for P.T.Barnum. During his stay, "Dr. GrifHn" allowed local news-men to see the mermaid. News of the "ugly looking littlemonster" in the Philadelphia press stirred further media in-terest in New York. By the time the phoney scientist arrivedin Barnum's hometown, newspapers there were ripe for theplucking. Barham convinced a New York newspaper thatGriffin had refused to make a deal with him to exhibit themermaid. He said he had no use for an illustration of themermaid that he had planned to use in his promotion and of-fered it to them for free. Then he took a second illustrationto another paper and told them the same fib. And then an-other afrer that.

The next day, the newspapers found Barnum hadscammed them all. As all three promoted the mermaid for

free, ads went out announcing that the mermaidwould be exhibited in a large concert hall on

Broadway "FOR ONE WEEK ONLY!" Barnumflooded the city with pamphlets promoting

the mermaid—and crowds of customersflooded into the showroom. "The wholetown seems to be flocking to see the Mer-maid," said the New York Tribune. Theyurged the curious to hurry so as not to miss

the last two days of the show. But theyneedn't have worried. Three days later,they announced, "Mr. Barnum, the in-defatigable proprietor of the American

Museum, has procured the Mermaid forone week" and one week only! You can

probably guess what happened next. Bar-num kept on showing the mermaid at his

museum for about a. year! Finally, "afrer ob-taining all the notoriety possible by advertising

and by exhibiting the mermaid at the museum,"Barnum sent it out on a highly publicized tour of Amer-

The "Feejee Mermaid," as it came to be known (Bar-num pretended the mermaid wascaught in the Fiji islands) was an enor-mous business success. "The receipts ofthe American Museum for the fourweeks immediately preceding the exhi-bition of the mermaid, amounted to$1272," recalled Barnum with satisfac-tion. "During the first four weeks ofthemermaid's exhibition, the receiptsamounted to $3341.93." This "ugly, dried-up, black-looking, and diminutive speci-men" (as Barnum described it) remains

one of history's most famous hoaxes. Bar-num considered the clever, unknown artist

who created the mermaid his colleague, sayinghe too deserved the title "Prince of Humbugs."

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