Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire

Image: © Lynette and Malcolm Johnson Taken: 3 Jun 2004

During the eighteenth century, medical research at universities was hampered by a shortage of dead bodies upon which to perform investigations. Many bodies, cadavers, were purchased illegally from "resurrectionists" who exhumed recently buried bodies for this purpose. In Scotland, the fear of bodysnatching, led parishes to invest in methods to protect the deceased. In Udny, they built a Morthouse. This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers. This one is at Udny in Aberdeenshire.

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