Mortsafe Greyfriar's Kirkyard
by Yvonne Johnstone
Title
Mortsafe Greyfriar's Kirkyard
Artist
Yvonne Johnstone
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Victorian Edinburgh was a dangerous place to be a corpse. A Mortsafe or Caged Lair was used to protect against body-snatchers (resurrection men). These expensive grave-covers were usually removed after a few weeks, when their contents were of no interest to anatomists, then re-used for the next grave. Although there was good money to be made from body-snatching, the risks were enormous.
To qualify as a doctor, a medical student had to dissect a body. The only bodies legally available were of hanged murderers and even in an exceptionally murderous year, this amounted to a mere handful of cadavers. As there were 500 medical students in Edinburgh alone, the shortage of legally available dead bodies led many to turn to body-snatchers to make up the numbers. In 1832, the Anatomy Act put a stop to the resurrection men, by making the acquisition of dead bodies for medical use legal.
Uploaded
April 13th, 2019
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