Departures of note

In June 1877, after his eldest daughter gave birth to an illegitimate child and work as a weaver became scarce, William McGonagall felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to write poetry. He described the sensation as a flame kindling his frame, with a voice crying, 'Write! Write!' He wrote to Queen Victoria seeking patronage and received a formal rejection letter, which he interpreted as praise. In July 1878, he walked about 60 miles from Dundee to Balmoral through a violent thunderstorm to perform before the Queen, only to be turned away at the gates by guards who told him Tennyson was the Queen's poet. Undeterred, he continued writing and performing, convinced of his own genius.

McGonagall was born in March 1825, either in Ireland or Edinburgh, to Irish parents Charles and Margaret. The family settled in Dundee around 1840, where he was apprenticed as a handloom weaver. He educated himself by reading cheap editions of Shakespeare's plays and entertained his shopmates with recitations. In 1846, he married Jean King, a fellow mill worker, and they had seven children. His performances, including a disastrous Macbeth in which he refused to die in the final act, earned him a reputation as a comic figure, and audiences often pelted him with food and carried him through the streets.

McGonagall wrote about 200 poems, including 'The Tay Bridge Disaster' and 'The Famous Tay Whale', which are now regarded as some of the worst in English literature. His work was marked by clumsy rhythms, weak vocabulary, and an unwavering belief that poetry only needed to rhyme. In 1880, he sailed to London and in 1887 to New York to seek his fortune, but returned unsuccessful both times. In 1885, he helped distribute a supposed autobiography, 'The Book of the Lamentations of the Poet Macgonagall', written with a reporter named John Willocks, which portrayed him as pompous and mocked his parents as 'bibulous'. McGonagall, who initially misunderstood the word, threatened to sue, and the book was withdrawn until after his death.

In 1890, friends funded the publication of his collection 'Poetic Gems' to relieve his financial distress. Later, he received a hoax letter purporting to knight him as 'Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah', a title he used for the rest of his life. He moved to Edinburgh in 1895, where he briefly gained a cult following, but by 1900 he was destitute and frail. McGonagall died penniless on 29 September 1902 in Edinburgh and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. A memorial plaque was installed in 1999, and Dundee maintains several tributes, including McGonagall Square and inscriptions of his poetry along the River Tay.