For the security of the dead

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 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 University 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, looking like small cottages with windows overlooking the kirkyard, can be seen at the edges of old churchyards across Scotland. Today, they are either derelict or used for storage but in the 18th and early 19th century, they were regularly used by grieving relatives to watch over a grave until its occupant was of no use to the anatomists. Watch-houses usually had a small fireplace for the comfort of watchers during the long wintry nights. 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. Mort-houses were 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.

Mort-safes 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 one of the most interesting of which lies in the kirkyard at Udny Green in Aberdeenshire. It differs from the others in the area by virtue of being circular in outline rather than rectangular, being slated rather than covered in turf, by having an inner iron door as well as an outer wooden door, and by having a revolving turntable on which the coffins were placed. The vault is made of massive granite blocks and internally has a domed stone roof; the slating was there merely to keep out the weather. The vault was built in 1832, almost immediately becoming obsolete thanks to the Anatomy Act that was published that same year.

You can take a peek inside the morthouse in a photograph taken in 2004.