Tour Scotland photograph of a Watch House in Abdie, North Fife, Scotland. From this building a watchful eye would be kept for grave robbers in the cemetery, body snatchers or resurrection men, who dug up newly buried bodies and sold them to anatomy schools to be dissected. In 1752 the bodies of all hung felons were granted to anatomists but this proved insufficient with growing numbers of medical schools spring up around the country. To meet this demand, a black market quickly emerged, trading in the stolen dead. ‘Resurrection Men’ could get an increasingly high price for their wares: human bodies that had been stolen from graveyards, and even deathbeds. A common trick of the trade was to burrow into the head end of the grave and drag the corpse out with a rope tied around its neck. A more subtle method was to dig a hole at a certain distance from the grave and tunnel the body out without anyone knowing the grave had been disturbed. The shroud and grave goods would often be left in the grave on removal of the body, as court sentences were lighter for body snatching alone. Such was the prevalence of body snatching that graves increasingly started to become fortified. Mausoleums, vaults and table tombstones became popular amongst the rich. Meanwhile the poor would place stones or flowers on the grave to detect any movement in the soil that might betray a theft, or dig branches and brambles into the grave to make tunnelling more difficult. Body snatching was so rife in Scotland that in 1816 Mortsafes were invented. These complex iron cages were bought or rented out until the body was sufficiently decomposed to deter the robbers. For further precaution, in some cemeteries friends would stay watch over graveyards at night, with watch towers sometimes being erected for the purpose.
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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