Westmorland Gazette on a London mermaid

Another Mermaid of better manufacture than the former has just been brought to London, for exhibition. The cockneys swallowed the last tolerably for a while, we wonder how this will go down.  -- The Duke of Gloucester has been to see it!
A Swiss Giantess, is now exhibiting in London, measuring six feet five inches high, and being proportionally stout.
The cockneys we understand are flocking in crowds to see  the invisible girl at the Lower Room, Spring Gardens.

Westmorland Gazette,  26th June, 1824.

 

 

 Here's the Duke referred to.  He looks pretty wide eyed. Perhaps he was quite decent: he was all for the abolition of slavery. But he did have a nickname: Silly Billy. Perhaps that was all part of why the Westmorland Gazette thought they'd take the piss.