Hull Mermaid

Mummified mermaid figure in the Hull and East Riding Museum, exposed as a Victorian taxidermy fake

The Hull Mermaid is one of the city's more unusual museum oddities: a Victorian-era taxidermy fake of the type that drew crowds across Europe and America. The figure is roughly 50 cm long, with the dried torso of a monkey grafted onto the tail of a large fish, the join carefully concealed with stitching and pitch.

It lives in the Hull and East Riding Museum on High Street, in a glass cabinet beside other examples of 19th-century curio collecting. Easy to miss in passing — ask a member of staff if you want to be pointed at it. Entry to the museum is free.

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A story
The Hull Mermaid is a small, dark, monkey-and-fish concoction of a type popular with 19th-century showmen who passed them off as aquatic curiosities. Hull's example was donated to the local museums in the 19th century and has been examined several times since — most recently with X-rays that confirmed the patchwork. The same kind of object was famously exhibited by P.T. Barnum as the "Feejee Mermaid".

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