RESEARCHING THE MERMAID RIOT LEGEND
What does culture have to do with it?
8 April 2024
“Researching the Mermaid Riot Legend”
Welcome to Monday Mermaid Musings where I talk about my new book The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, March 19, 2024) and how much of the story was created. I hope you enjoy these tidbits as I hope to extend the conversation around the book beyond the mythology, lovely as that is most of the time.
From the original tweet by that agent that I’ve never been able to find on Twitter again, I did the Google shuffle and searched the legend of the “mermaid riots” that were reported in the Charleston, South Carolina papers in June 1867. There is quite a bit, little bits, but quite a lot of interesting takes on the story. Here are some of the intriguing perspectives that contributed to my own version of the legend.
“The Legend of Dr. Trott’s Apothecary and the Captured Mermaid”
Haunted house tours have been an interesting rage for years. I remember a writer friend going on a haunted house tour in New Orleans and hearing stories told about the house of author Anne Rice (Interview With the Vampire, 1976) who was born in the city. When my friend returned home, she began her own haunted house tour in our town. Charleton, SC has several popular ghost walking tours, one operated by Charleston Terrors. It was on their blog that I found a great recounting of the mermaid story. They claim, “Charleston is considered one of the most haunted places in the Lowcountry, the South, America, and perhaps the entire world.”
“P. T. Barnum and the FeeJee Mermaid”
Multiple articles I consulted noted a story about the “FeeJee Mermaid” presented by that famous carny guy named P. T. Barnum. The father of the circus hoax wanted to capitalize on “mermaid fever” in the early nineteenth century and travelled around with an exhibit that supposedly proved the existence of mythology’s most captivating creature. The debunking of the hoax explains the gruesome imagery of how the upper body of a mammal such as a monkey or orangutan was sewn onto the lower half of a fish such as a salmon to produce a lifelike, shriveled up something or other that Barnum claimed proved the fisherman’s stories of mermaid sightings. I think it’s gross.
This article describes how Barnum came into possession of the “artifact” and took it on the road, bilking hundreds of people out of their money to look at it. One reasonable piece of information in the article explains why people might have been this gullable. Many new species of animals were being discovered all over the world and brought to America for showmen like Barnum to promote in his museum of curiosities. If a platypus was a genuine animal, why not the mermaid?
“What Does Culture Have to Do With It?”
Articles like these prompted me to wonder and work with this time in American history when great change and upheaval were taking place. Our country had endured civil strife that changed the direction of the United States but not always in good ways. The Industrial Revolution was putting people to work, which meant they had money and mobility. They could move around more because they had the resources and the luxury time, and there was a world of possibilities open to them that their parents and grandparents hadn’t known. Because they had jobs in the new industries helping to recover the devastation brought about by the war, they could buy tickets to the circus when it was in town.
Yet these upwardly mobile individuals were influenced by the cultures from which they were produced. Culture is partially kept alive by the stories that are passed down through generations. Stories and myths are sometimes created to make sense of life and the things that early civilizations didn’t have the science or technology to comprehend. Sometimes it was possible to believe the stories as actual truth rather than ways to explain the unexplainable.
Stay tuned for more background, how I twisted the so-called facts of the “mermaid incident” to suit the story, and how I applied literary license to write a fantasy novel about learning to believe what you’re told and when to question it.
~JEH
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The Mermaid Riot is a work of fiction inspired by a true event that happened in Charleston, South Carolina in 1867 which became known as the mermaid riots. Names, dates, and locations have been fabricated to accommodate the plot.
The Mermaid Riot by Joy E. Held is available in ebook and print form from online retailers. Read a sample and purchase here
https://www.fireandiceya.com/authors/joyeheld/mermaid.html
JOY E. HELD is an author, educator, editor, entrepreneur, and literary citizen responsible for this site and its contents. She is the author of
Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2020)
Writer Wellness Workbook: A Guided Workbook and Journal to Accompany Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2023)
The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, 2024) Young Adult Historical Fantasy
She writes spicy historical fiction under a pen name.
She is the winner of multiple writing and book awards:
West Virginia Writers, Inc. Annual Writing Contest, Honorable Mention, Novel, 1998.
New York Book Festival, Honorable Mention, Writer Wellness, 2020.
Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Writer Wellness, 2021.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, Member of the Year, 2020.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, First Book Award, 2020.
She is an adjunct faculty member in the Southern New Hampshire University Online MFA Creative Writing.
She is a proud graduate of Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction.
She is a member of The Authors Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Joy is the founder and CEO of My WRITEDAY Subscription Box for writers and readers.
Thanks, Joy, for the historical-cultural perspecetive on THE MERMAID RIOT!