The Lost Museum Archive
Joice Heth Exhibition
This image of the exhibition of Joice Heth comes from Barnum's 1855 autobiography The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself. In the book, it illustrates a passage describing how a Boston woman closely examined Heth to determine if she was a machine or a human. Heth, in the background, looks far less grotesque than she did in the poster which Barnum used to advertise her in 1835.
Source: P.T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself, 1855.