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Joice Heth (c. 1756 [citation needed] – February 19, 1836) was an African-American woman who was exhibited by P.T. Barnum with the false claim that she was the 161-year-old nursing mammy of George Washington. Her exhibition under these claims, and her public autopsy, gained considerable notoriety.
Joice Heth was an enslaved African American woman whom P. T. Barnum marketed as George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse. Historians do not agree on her actual birth date, although most believe that she was born in 1756, which would have made her around 80 years old at the time of her death in 1836 in New York City.
Dec 2, 2015 · P. T. Barnum’s career as a Kentucky show man began with his ownership and exploitation of African American slave Joice Heth.
Joice Heth was a popular subject for the many newspapers of the brash working-class "penny press" throughout her seven-month exhibit, and controversies surrounding her death provided a windfall of stories for rival papers.
Mar 22, 2022 · On February 25, 1836, Dr. David L. Rogers cut open the black woman in front of fifteen hundred spectators and frowned; Heth did not look a day over eighty. The public was duped. It’s likely that Barnum was unaware that Heth was not 161 years old, and was himself defrauded by a crafty old woman.
In August 1835, circus magnate P.T. Barnum paid promoter R.W. Lindsay $1,000 for the rights to the story of Joice Heth. Heth, an elderly African-American woman, with an interesting claim to a piece of George Washington history.
The anatomical examination of the body of Joice Heth yesterday at the City Saloon, resulted in the exposure of one of the most precious humbugs that ever was imposed upon a credulous community.
The Life of Joice Heth is a twelve-page pamphlet published in 1835 that purports to tell the story of Joice Heth, an enslaved African American woman whom famed showman P.T. Barnum exhibited as the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington.
In 1835 Barnum exhibited Joice Heth, ostensibly a 161-year-old African American woman who had been the nurse of George Washington, in the hall of a hotel in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She was a tremendous success, partially because of her flamboyant promotion and partially because her tales of Washington’s youth were….
Joice Heth’s faux memoir, a truly unique historical document, suggests the starring role fantasy occupied in these performances, its elastic contours stretched to bulwark far-fetched tales of Heth’s ostensible origins and more.
