Wednesday, April 22, 2026

His Mother Named Him Marmaduke?



Marmaduke Wetherell (1883–1939) was a British–South African actor, screenwriter, producer, film director and big-game hunter, as well as the fraudster responsible for the hoax "surgeon's photograph" of the Loch Ness Monster.

From Wikipedia:

“In the 1930s, Marmaduke went to Loch Ness to look for the Loch Ness Monster. Wetherell claimed to have found footprints, but when casts of the footprints were sent to scientists for analysis they turned out to be from a hippopotamus; a prankster had used a hippopotamus-foot umbrella stand. (There is strong evidence that Wetherell perpetrated the hoax himself) As a result, Wetherell was publicly ridiculed by his employer, the Daily Mail. To get revenge on the Mail, Wetherell perpetrated the hoax "surgeon's photograph" of the Loch Ness Monster with his son Ian (who bought the material for the fake and took the photos), son-in-law Christian Spurling (a sculpture specialist), and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent), taking a picture of a toy submarine made of plastic wood and passing it off as the monster. Chambers gave the photographic plates to surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson, a friend of his who enjoyed "a good practical joke". Wilson had the plates developed and sold the first photo to the Daily Mail; the Mail would then announce that the monster had been photographed. The photo had been described as a hoax as early as 1975, but this was not common knowledge among the general public until 1994.”




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