Joice Heth

Joice Heth (c. 1756 – February 19, 1836) was an enslaved African-American woman who was exhibited in the United States during the final months of her life. In 1835, showman P. T. Barnum promoted her with the false claim that she was the 161-year-old former wet nurse of George Washington, helping to launch his career while making Heth one of the most widely publicized performers of the era. Elderly, blind, and largely paralyzed, she appeared before audiences telling stories about Washington and singing hymns. Following Heth's death in 1836, her body remained a public attraction. A widely attended public autopsy concluded that she was about 80 years old, disproving Barnum's claims about her age, but Barnum continued the publicity by falsely asserting that the wrong body had been examined. Historians have described Heth's exhibition, and the display of her body after death, as an early example of the commercialization of race, spectacle, and pseudoscience in American popular entertainment.