Rain clouds over the kirkyard of St Fergus

This is the ancient walled kirkyard of St Fergus overlooking the North Sea at Kirkton Head. The small building with the chimney is a watch house built around 1820. It was used as a shelter for men watching over the graves of newly buried corpses, to prevent them from being stolen by the resurrection men for sale to the anatomists in Aberdeen.

At that time the only bodies that were legally available for dissection were those of people executed for murder. The supply was woefully inadequate and the shortfall was made good by body-snatching, which became a a serious problem throughout Scotland. The magnitude of the risk was well described by the Rev. W. Fleming of West Calder in his diary for 1821:

"Few burial grounds in Scotland, it is believed, have escaped the ravaging hands of resurrection men; and it is reported that with respect to a church-yard not far from Edinburgh, that, till within three years ago, when the inhabitants began to watch the graves, the persons interred there did not remain in their graves above a night, and that these depredations were successfully carried out for nine successive winters".