1. Dangling from a 70-ton steam crane, the carcase of the Tay Whale is lifted ashore by the light of a full moon at Dundee docks. Huge crowds gathered although it was well after midnight in early January. The whale’s tongued lolled out of its mouth then fell into the water. Divers recovered it the following day. McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

2. The Tay Whale lies upside down on the shore at Stonehaven. Three fishing boats from nearby Gourdon had towed it there having come across the carcase floating on the surface of the sea a week after it had been harpooned by Dundee whalers. The whale had escaped but with fatal injuries. McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

3. One small dog and the inevitable crowd of people try to make sense of the arrival of a dead humpback whale on the shore at Stonehaven. The carcase was auctioned there and bought for £226 by Dundee oil merchant John Woods who immediately arranged for it to be towed back to Dundee by a tugboat. McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

4. The Tay Whale at the Woods oil yard in Dundee. Visitors posed in the propped-up mouth to have their photographs taken. A best-selling postcard superimposed this shot of the whale on a different background – a sunset over the Tay! McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

5. The whale’s carcase was partially dissected and embalmed at the Woods yard by Professor John Struthers of Aberdeen University; much of its skeleton was removed and replaced by a wooden frame, and its flesh and vital organs were replaced by a stuffing of straw. It was in this guise that the whale went on a nationwide tour by rail. McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

6. The skeleton of the Tay Whale was eventually presented by John Woods to the city of Dundee, despite lucrative offers from big museums in London, Europe and America. It has been on display in the city’s principal museum more or less ever since. McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee.

7. A booklet detailing the story of the whale’s arrival in the Tay, ‘its pursuit, escape, recovery and subsequent adventures’. Note that the word ‘death’ does not appear on the title page, and the word ‘recovery’ is ambiguous to say the least. It was the whale’s corpse that was recovered. Scran.

8. In 1891, Dundee Naturalists Society hosted a grandly title ‘Conversazione’ – a social meeting devoted to the arts or sciences. The programme indicates a lecture by Professor Struthers on ‘The Skeleton of the Tay Whale’. Seven years after the event, it seems, the professor was still making money out of the Tay Whale. Scran.

9. This extraordinary cartoon of 1885 shows Professor Struthers indulging his passion for whales – dissecting dead ones, that is. The whale on which the professor sits is thought to be a rare beluga which he is known to have acquired. The canister by the whale’s mouth, the effects of which it is apparently enjoying, contains chloroform. Scran.