The Fiji Mermaid: What Was the Abominable Creature and Why Was It So Popular?

The Fiji (also spelled as ‘Feejee’) mermaid was a sideshow that gained popularity during the 19th century. The original Fiji Mermaid was displayed in 1842 by P.T. Barnum, an American showman and businessman, in the Barnum’s American Museum, New York. This curiosity attracted many visitors to the museum, and its popularity is attested in the fact that more Fiji mermaids would later be displayed in the United States.

Barnum’s mermaid is commonly said to have been destroyed in a fire that broke out and burned down Barnum’s museum in 1865. Nevertheless, at that time, the mermaid would have had been displayed at Kimball’s Boston Museum, and only perished when that museum too went up in flames in the early 1880s. It has also been claimed by some that the mermaid was rescued from (either one of) the fires, and is still being displayed today.

A Mermaid in the US?

The story of the Fiji mermaid in the United States begins with the arrival, in the middle of July 1842, of an Englishman by the name of ‘Dr. J. Griffin’ (who was actually Levi Lyman, an associate of Barnum’s), a supposed member of the ‘British Lyceum of Natural History’, in New York. Griffin, it seems, brought with him a mermaid, which was claimed to have been caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. News of Griffin’s arrival, along with his strange specimen was known by the press, and reporters went to Griffin’s hotel, demanding to see the mermaid. When he had given them a glimpse of what he had brought with him, they were convinced that it was real.