feejee

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