For the protection of the dead.

This is the old kirkyard at Belhelvie, a few miles north of Aberdeen. The tower is all that remains of the kirk of St. Colm's and the grassy mound in the foreground is an 18th century underground vault, built to protect the dead from bodysnatchers.

Early human dissections in Britain were of criminals executed for murder. Unfortunately for the early anatomists the supply of such bodies was very limited. With the growth of medical teaching in the 18th century, universities and private anatomy schools required ever-greater numbers of cadavers for study and grave robbing became by far the most significant source of bodies. The earliest grave robbers were the surgeon-anatomists themselves, or their pupils, but later on professional body snatchers provided several thousand bodies annually. The urgent need to stop the grave robbers led to the first Anatomy Bill in 1829, which allowed the dissection of anyone dying in a hospital or workhouse who had no relatives to bury them, or whose relatives were too poor to do so. In 1832 an Act was passed by Parliament allowing people to leave their bodies to medical science, effectively providing medical schools with sufficient corpses for teaching purposes. Grave-robbing effectively ended at that time.

Not surprisingly, grave robbing was a practice that was generally frowned upon by society. Across Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain, parishes near to anatomy schools used a variety of means to protect new graves from the body-snatchers, in particular watch-houses, mort-safes and mort-houses Watch-houses, usually looking like small cottages with windows overlooking the kirkyard, were regularly used by grieving relatives to watch over a grave until its occupant was of no use to the anatomists. Mort-safes were devices designed to physically prevent body snatchers from obtaining the corpse. At their simplest they were a large and very heavy stone placed over the grave or coffin. More complex versions took the form of an iron-grille that was placed over the grave, or a cast iron 'over-coffin' or cage, into which the wooden coffin was placed, and then buried. This could then be retrieved after a suitable period of time had elapsed.

Mortsafes were efficient ways of protecting the dead but they did present problems in that they were heavy and cumbersome to put into place and to retrieve once the body had become corrupt. Such difficulties led to the design and building of public mort-houses; solidly built vaults, with massive walls and heavy wooden and metal doors. Bodies were stored in these impregnable buildings until decomposed and were then retrieved and buried in the usual way. There are no less than two mort-houses in the old kirkyard at Belhelvie. The site being adjacent to the main road from Aberdeen to Newburgh, and only 8 miles distant, the kirkyard must have been of great interest to the resurrection men supplying the anatomy schools of Aberdeen. The smaller of the two vaults is under the mound in the blip and is of simple and primitive design. It is built of stone, with an arched roof and is covered with a large mound of turfed soil. The vault is 8 feet in length, over 6 feet wide and five and a half feet high at the centre of the arched roof. The doorway is only just over 2 feet in width and just over 4 feet high. The entrance is reached down a steep flight of 5 stone steps and transporting a full coffin down the stairs and into the narrow opening must have been a very difficult and unpleasant business.

Those not of a nervous disposition may care to take a look inside.

This small and inconvenient vault was replaced by a much larger and much more secure one in 1835, by which time the passing of the Anatomy Act had made it redundant!