Mermaid Monday: Mermaid in London March 26, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This is a weird entry that I haven’t been able to find my way into. The year is 1891 and this is clearly a mechanism of some kind: but how did they do it? drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Or was it a light show, like Pepper’s Ghost.
The latest addition to the side shows at the Royal Aquarium [London] is a mermaid recently captured, it is said, off the Isle of Wight. Naturalists will no doubt interested to know that mermaids are to be found so near our shores. At any rate they may now see one Westminster in the person of young lady who reposes in a graceful attitude, such as mermaids may be supposed to adopt, in tank. The floor of the tank is covered with rockwork, sea shells, and corals, whilst little fish are seen disporting themselves in front of the mermaid. She has a splendid head of hair, which hangs down her waist, and which she occasionally combs out with a very prosaic-looking comb. By the way, did mermaids ever use combs? We seem have read somewhere that they combed their hair with a sea shell, but we may be wrong on this point. The illusion has been cleverly arranged by Professor Addison.
This definitely rang a bell with some readers: Ozinor writes, 29 Mar 2018, Re the mermaid at the Royal Aquarium, I seem to recall a similar illusion where the “mermaid” sat behind a relatively thin glass tank which was filled with water. The fish swam in the water and the mermaid combed her hair in the space behind the tank. With clever lighting the whole thing was very effective. I wish I could remember where and when I saw it. Ruth in OK writes, 29 Mar 2018: Possibly by having a young woman behind a glass aquarium with insufficient lighting all round? Seems like I’ve heard of or seen something similar somewhere.
29 Mar 2018: Chris from Haunted Ohio Books seems to have the solution: Well, this is annoying. Here are some earlier living mermaid ads (the illusion is arranged by one Harry Phillips), but, of course, no hint is given as to how it is done! But the British Library suggests in the notes to this illustration that she was sitting in a open-air tank within a water- and fish-filled one.
This exhibit would have been of less concern to the anti-vivisectionists of the time, advertising itself explicitly as an illusion. The “good looking living mermaid” here was apparently “submerged in a glass tank with live fish”, with “all sides of the tank … open to the inspection of visitors”. It is clear from this that the ‘mermaid’ was sitting in an air-filled tank within a thinner, water-filled tank.
29 Mar 2018: ML write in with a last minute email on this ‘I suspect this effect was achieved by the old carny trick of a 45º diagonal mirror running from one rear corner to the opposite front corner of a tank . The tank could be filled with actual water with little fishies disporting themselves, etc, actually in the tank. The “mermaid” in her costume and makeup is staged out of the water and out of sight to one side. With attention to potential sight-lines, some careful staging and given a 19th century air of plausibility born out of a lack of sophistication about such things, a person standing in front of the tank could well see the actor appearing to be in the tank and the little fishies swimming in front of her. I do find it interesting that the news article alludes to it being an illusion, so perhaps the sophistication of an 1890’s London observer was not quite so low as might be assumed of their back-country brethren of the same era – albeit the birth of suckers by the minute was a well established fact and well known by that time.’
24 Apr 2018: Invisible with this great photograph… 1956 Burton upon Trent
