What happened
On April 21, 1934, the “Daily Mail” published a photograph attributed to London gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson. It shows a small head on a long, swan-like neck rising from the loch – an image that for decades became the icon of Nessie. Wilson claimed that two days earlier, while driving along the loch, he had spotted the animal, grabbed his camera and taken four pictures, two of which came out clearly. Authorship by a respected physician lent the photograph enormous credibility, and the name “Surgeon's Photograph” stuck to it for good. Doubts surfaced from the 1970s onward, and in 1994 the story behind the hoax was revealed: the “animal” was a model made from a toy submarine bought at a Woolworth's store.
Witnesses
Formally Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London physician; in reality the photographs were taken by Ian Wetherell, a member of the group behind the hoax.
Explanations and hypotheses
The hoax was devised by filmmaker and big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, who had earlier been ridiculed by the “Daily Mail” after finding fake “Nessie footprints.” The head and neck, made of plastic wood, were crafted by his stepson Christian Spurling, the photographs were taken by Wetherell's son Ian, and insurance agent Maurice Chambers passed the plates to Wilson, who agreed to front the prank. Spurling confessed in 1991, and the details were described in the book “Nessie – the Surgeon's Photograph Exposed.” Today it is one of the best-documented hoaxes in the history of cryptozoology.
Hoax A proven or admitted hoax.
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