Better safe than sorry!

If you had been buried in Aberdeenshire in the first three decades of the 19th century then you might have had one of these strange objects lowered into your grave to protect your coffin. It is a mort-safe, a device designed to physically prevent grave robbers from from stealing your body.

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 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, also known as resurrection men, provided several thousand bodies annually. 

These mort-safes lie in the graveyard of Cluny Parish Church in Aberdeenshire. They each consist of a coffin shaped grey granite slab, some 6 inches thick and of great weight. Below the slab, and firmly attached to it there is a riveted lattice work of iron bars some one and a half feet in depth. The cage was meant to fit over a coffin with the heavy slab on top thus preventing the body snatchers from gaining access to the coffin from whatever direction. Once you were too rotten to be of interest, the grave was re-opened and mort-safe was removed to await its next customer.