The paper interrogates the manner in which Indian tigers were commodified, claimed, and appropriated by the authorities of the British Empire. It addresses the impact of goods made from the tigers’ body parts upon the material culture of Victorian England including their place in Victorian taxidermy, menageries, and theaters, and the effect of such commodities on the intersections of race, class and gender. The fetish for such products contributed to the genres of writings on the gothic and the Victorian uncanny. The strange, weird tigers’ body parts items facilitated trade and traffic in goods and people between England and India in the nineteenth century and the trade routes it opened up. The essay explores how the British Empire was constructed both literally and symbolically at the behest of the poaching of Indian tigers and through the formulation of stereotypes about them.