Tay Whale

The Regius Professor of Anatomy at Aberdeen University, John Struthers dissected the whale, much of the time in public with a military band playing in the background, organised by Woods.

The doggerel poet William McGonagall wrote a notoriously bad poem, "The Famous Tay Whale", shortly after the events.

The headlines included:[2] Finally on 25 January 1884, when the whale was too badly decomposed for further public exhibition, Struthers was allowed to come and dissect the famous specimen.

[1] There were snow showers, but Struthers was able to remove much of the skeleton before Woods had the flesh embalmed; the carcass was then stuffed and sewn up to be taken on a profitable tour as far as Edinburgh and London.

It was one of a wide range of specimens of many species that he energetically collected to form a museum of zoology, to illustrate Darwin's theories.

So Mr. John Wood has bought it for two hundred and twenty-six pound,And has brought it to Dundee all safe and all sound;Which measures forty feet in length from the snout to the tail,So I advise the people far and near to see it without fail.