Joice Heth - Public Autopsy

Public Autopsy

Barnum engaged the service of a surgeon, Dr. David L. Rogers, who performed the autopsy on February 25, 1836, in front of fifteen hundred spectators in New York's City Saloon, with Barnum charging fifty cents admission. When Rogers declared the age claim a fraud, Barnum insisted that the autopsy victim was another person, and Heth was alive, on a tour to Europe. Later Barnum admitted the hoax.