his hand at writing prose and endorsements for local businesses for a short time, in 1894, he and his wife were forced to move to Perth. Soon after, he received a letter purporting to be from representatives of King Thibaw Min of Burma. In it, he was informed that the King had knighted him as Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah. Despite the fact that this was a fairly transparent hoax, McGonagall would refer to himself as "Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah" in his advertising for the rest of his life. In 1895, McGonagall and his wife moved to Edinburgh. Here, McGonagall met with some success, becoming a "cult figure" and was in great demand. It did not last long, and by 1900 he was once again destitute and now old and sickly. Though he was now too frail to walk the streets selling his poems, donations from friends, as ever, kept him afloat. He died penniless in 1902, above what is now The Captain's Bar in Edinburgh's South College Street and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. A wall-mounted memorial installed to his memory in 1999 is inscribed: Additionally, a plaque above 5 South College Street in Edinburgh shows an image of McGonagall, and bears the inscription: Tay Bridge Disaster "The Tay Bridge Disaster" has been widely reproduced, and recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge near Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it. It begins: (Modern sources give the death toll as 75.) And finishes: More than a year before the disaster, McGonagall had written a poem in praise of the Tay Bridge: "The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay", in which he specifically expressed a desire Once the replacement bridge had been built, he composed an ode to the new construction: "An Address to the New Tay Bridge" "Strong enough all windy storms to defy". In popular culture In comedy and theatre The memory of McGonagall was resurrected by comedian Spike Milligan. A character called McGoonagall frequently appears in The Goon Show, alternately played by Milligan and Peter Sellers. Milligan also occasionally gave readings of McGonagall's verse. McGoonagall often introduces himself as "William McGoonagall, Poet, Tragedian and Twit". An episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus featured