THE man who rediscovered the infamous Loch Ness Monster hoax photograph has died.
Bill McEwen, who previously owned Wm Ogston’s chemists in Inverness, died at his home in Westhill just before Christmas as his family recalled him rediscovering the iconic picture.
McEwen reportedly ran the pharmacy from 1971 to 1997 after buying the business from a previous owner called Santiago Penney.
In the building's basement McEwen stumbled upon the original photographic plates from the world-famous Nessie picture, the Surgeon’s Photograph of 1933, in some dusty storage cupboards.
“Interestingly, the iconic photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, the black and white Surgeon’s photograph that turned out to be fake, was developed in the basement of Ogston’s Chemists,” McEwen’s eldest son of three, Kevin, told the Inverness Courier.
The black and white picture was supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, and was published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934.
The picture was considered by many to be solid proof of the legendary creature’s existence but was exposed in 1991 as a fake crafted from a toy submarine with a plastic head stuck on it.
Kevin recalled his father having the picture printed as postcards which “flew off the shelves” as tourists apparently “loved them”.
“We’ve got lots of copies of the photo because dad had them printed off when he found the original plates,” Kevin said.
“Dad also got thousands of them printed as postcards and they flew off the shelves - the tourists loved them!”
According to the ex-BBC newsreader turned Nessie hunter Nicholas Witchell said in his 1975 book, The Loch Ness Story, Wilson brought in the plate negatives for Ogston's then-owner George Morrison to develop.
Apparently, Wilson allowed Morrison to keep some of the plates which were then rediscovered by McEwen years later.
When cleaning out Wm Ogston’s chemists in 1997 McEwen’s son recalls that none of the family could find the photographic plates.
“I searched the place from top to bottom for them before we sold Ogston’s, but their whereabouts remain a mystery,” Kevin said.
