While I was walking along the tow path of the Forth and Clyde canal that cuts across Scotland from west to east, I noted a church just off the path – the Cadder Parish Church. A church has stood there since at least 1150. With camera in hand I wandered through the cemetery and among the many photos were a couple of shots that puzzled me. It wasn’t until later that I learned the details of what I had taken. The photo above is a mort safe. In the 19th century, with the rise to prominence of Scottish medical schools, there was a corresponding rise in demand for fresh cadavers to help medical students study anatomy. Body snatching became a problem. The church yard in Cadder was ideal because it was close to the canal which runs west directly into Glasgow. One remedy was the mort safe – a coffin–shaped metal container. A coffin was placed inside and then covered by a stone lid that would have required several men to set in place. The coffin would be removed and properly interred once the corpse was sufficiently decomposed that it would be useless to the medical schools.
An adjunct to the mort safe was the watch house pictured below. Armed guards would be posted in the watch house and were authorized to shoot intruders. The floor of the watch house is covered in ashes. The guards were required to keep a fire burning and were subject to substantial fines if they let the fire burn out or were caught sleeping.
I suspect that the extreme lengths to which the Scottish would go to protect their dead was driven, at least in part, by a belief in the literal bodily resurrection of the dead. If bodies had been tampered with, then there would be no peace for the dead on the day of judgment. Which makes the mort safe a paradoxical solution. Wouldn’t a pre-emptive destruction of the body defeat the purpose of preserving it?’
