Nine years ago a certain Mr. Altman of Brooklyn visited an old colonial house purchased long before by his father and now ready for the wreckers. Prowling through the empty rooms he stopped and stared at a strange thing hanging over a mantel. Nearly a foot long and apparently mummified, it had two widespread, goatish feet, a curling tail, flaps of tissue extending from its body like wings, a grotesque caricature of a human face with plump cheeks, beady eyes, a pursed, smirking mouth (see cut).
Mr. Altman took the monster to Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History and laid it on the desk of Ichthyologist Eugene Willis Gudger. Dr. Gudger had never seen such a thing before but he is versed in old and curious lore, knew instantly what it was. It was, he told Mr. Altman, a "Jenny Haniver." Dr. Gudger photographed the thing, began a systematic collation of data on Jenny Hanivers, ancient and modern, which last week he published in the June Scientific Monthly.
Jenny Hanivers are made from the dried carcasses of small rays and skates. In natural state the underside of a ray's head slightly resembles a monstrous human face with nostrils that seem to be eyes and a wide, toothed mouth. The human effect is heightened when beads are inserted in the nostrils and the tissue artfully mutilated. The pectoral fins can be cut away from the head and moulded into a headdress resembling a bishop's mitre. The ventral fins can be distorted to resemble feet. Neither Dr. Gudger nor an Australian colleague investigating the same subject could learn the origin of the term "Jenny Haniver" which appears in no standard dictionary.