For the security of the dead.

Prior to 1832 the only legally available bodies for human dissection in Britain were those 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 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, also known as resurrection men, provided several thousand bodies annually.

Naturally enough people were much offended by the theft of their friends and relatives and devised various methods of protecting the newly buried. Mort-safes were devices designed to physically prevent the body snatchers from digging up newly buried corpses. Most mort-safes were intended for reuse once the body was decayed and of no interest to the anatomists but a few were clearly designed to be left permanently in the ground. Sometime around 1905 a gravedigger opening up a grave in the kirkyard at the Kirkton of Tough in Aberdeenshire came across an iron mort-safe of unusual design. The iron cage, 6 foot 8 inches in length was manhandled out of the grave and it still lies against the kirkyard wall.

The cage consists of 4 rectangles of iron bar joined together by 4 riveted iron rods that run from end to end. The upper bar of the iron cage, which is particularly strong, is securely fastened with an iron bolt and lead into a heavy stone at each end. It would appear that the device was constructed around the coffin and the stones attached prior to the burial. The whole mort-safe is so heavy and so robust that grave-robbers would have had the greatest of difficulty in raising it from the grave, let alone of breaking it open. This mort-safe had clearly been designed to be left in the ground after burial rather than to be retrieved for reuse. When it was finally raised, some 70 years after its burial, the coffin and skeleton had completely disintegrated but the mort-safe was fully intact showing that it had served its purpose.