When the 19th‑century obsession with anatomy turned the dead into a commodity, families scrambled for any edge they could find. Below are the 10 weird things that were invented to keep resurrection men from pilfering fresh corpses, ranging from over‑engineered coffins to outright booby traps.
10 Weird Things: The Grim Guarding Tactics
10 Mort Safes
Mort safes were stout iron cages that were either perched atop or wrapped around a coffin, acting as a steel shield against the grab‑hands of resurrection men. Typically, they remained in place for up to ten weeks, long enough for the body to decompose beyond the point of scientific value. In some cases, the metal cages were never removed, becoming permanent sentinels over the grave.
Edinburgh, a hotbed of surgical learning, was also a hotspot for body‑snatching, thanks in part to the infamous duo William Burke and William Hare. Today, the city’s Surgeons’ Hall Museums showcase this darker chapter, even offering a hands‑on dissecting table for visitors—though thankfully no real cadavers are involved.
Evidence of mort safes still dots the historic Greyfriars Kirkyard, standing alongside a host of other protective measures devised by locals terrified of having their loved ones exhumed.
9 Iron Coffins
Affluent families sometimes commissioned entire coffins forged from iron, sealing the deceased inside an impenetrable metal box. One such coffin, riveted shut and dated 1819, was uncovered at St. Brides Church on Fleet Street in London. Across the Atlantic, a boy’s iron coffin from the 1850s was recovered near Washington, underscoring the trans‑Atlantic appeal of this macabre security.
Patented designs promised tamper‑proof protection, but the weight of an iron coffin demanded specialized lifting gear, which many cemetery workers were reluctant to accommodate. This logistical headache sometimes led to bizarre legal battles.
In a particularly odd case, a woman’s iron coffin sat unburied for three months while courts debated whether the cemetery staff could refuse entry, turning a protective measure into a bureaucratic nightmare.
8 Mort Houses
Mort houses were fortified, often prison‑like buildings where bodies were stored temporarily before burial, rendering them unsuitable for dissection. Families paid a fee to keep their loved ones in these secure vaults for several weeks until natural decomposition made the corpses useless to surgeons.
The architecture of mort houses resembled bank vaults: thick granite walls, a single stair‑descended doorway, and a series of double doors. The inner portal was sheathed in iron and secured with a massive lock; the outer door, built of sturdy oak, was studded with iron bolts and massive mortise locks.
Keyholes were guarded by intersecting iron bars, each hinged at opposite ends and locked with a gigantic padlock. Getting past such defenses would have required the determination of a true grave‑robber.
Scotland boasted numerous mort houses, including one at Udny that featured a revolving coffin platform for swift loading and unloading of bodies.
7 Delaying Burial
When mort houses were out of reach financially, some families resorted to keeping the corpse at home until natural decay made it unattractive to body snatchers—a grim and uncomfortable solution. To further deter grave‑robbers, mourners would mix the burial earth with an equal portion of straw, creating a tougher digging medium.
While the wealthy could afford elaborate safeguards, the indigent dead were especially exposed. The penalties for stealing a body were relatively mild, provided the thief didn’t pilfer personal belongings, which is why clothing was often tossed back into the grave after a snatch.
Workhouse deaths were particularly vulnerable; charitable hospitals would sometimes sell the bodies of inmates directly to medical schools, and resurrection men would masquerade as relatives to claim the corpses. In death, many of these individuals were valued more than they ever were in life.
6 Mort Stones
Because the first two weeks after burial were the prime window for theft, some families placed massive granite slabs—known as mort stones—over the grave’s surface as a temporary shield. These stones matched the plot’s dimensions, completely sealing the coffin beneath.
At Inverurie near Aberdeen, several mort stones remain visible in the churchyard, each requiring a dedicated hoist for placement and later removal to make way for a headstone.
In 1816, Superintendent Gibb of Aberdeen Harbor Works donated a mort stone, costing half a crown, to St. Fitticks churchyard. The accompanying lifting equipment was even more expensive and had to be locked away securely to keep out the eager hands of body snatchers.
5 Vigils
Relatives often took turns keeping watch at a fresh grave throughout the first week, refusing to leave the spot even as darkness fell. The fear of resurrection men was so intense that families would endure sleepless nights beside the earth, hoping their presence alone would scare off any would‑be thieves.
Victorian belief held that a whole body was required for entrance into heaven, so stealing a corpse meant stealing the soul’s final peace. This belief added a spiritual urgency to the physical protection.
A tragic tale from Somerset recounts Miss Rogers, who lost her fiancé in a shipwreck. She was buried in her wedding dress, laden with jewelry, while household servants kept a nightly vigil until a mort stone could finally be laid over the grave, ensuring her peace.
4 Watchmen
When families could not spare themselves to sit vigil, many parishes hired professional watchmen to patrol the cemetery. The parish of Ely, for instance, employed a guard whose explicit duty was to remain “constantly in the churchyards for the protection of the bodies buried.”
Larger graveyards even erected watchhouses—two‑story towers where a guard could rest between shifts. One such tower near Aberdeen featured a lookout on the upper floor, a narrow firing slit for shooting intruders, and a bell atop the structure to summon help.
Some resurrection men masqueraded as watchmen, exploiting their insider knowledge of trap locations. Others colluded with legitimate guards, taking a cut of the proceeds from sold bodies. The job was perilous; when bribery failed, some watchmen were attacked with sabers.
3 Coffin Torpedoes
Among the most inventive anti‑snatching devices was the coffin torpedo, patented in 1878 by Columbus, Ohio inventor Philip K. Clover. The patent promised a mechanism that, if the coffin were disturbed, would discharge a cartridge, inflicting injury or death upon the trespasser.
The torpedo’s design featured a volatile charge that would explode with “deadly force” should anyone attempt to extract the body. Little thought seemed to be given to the legality of such a weapon, and there is scant evidence it ever entered mass production.
Fortunately, the era’s graveyards were already fraught with danger—swords‑wielding thieves, armed watchmen, and fortified tombs—making the addition of high‑explosive devices unnecessary.
2 Coffin Collars
A more pragmatic solution was the coffin collar: a hefty iron ring bolted to a thick oak board, which in turn was secured around the coffin’s base. This heavy restraint made it virtually impossible to lift the coffin without decapitating the corpse, severely diminishing its value to a dissecting surgeon.
Coffin collars were relatively inexpensive and saw use in Scottish churchyards. Though unsightly—visible even in an open casket—they offered families a modest peace of mind, knowing the dead were less likely to be pilfered.
1 Booby Traps On Graves
Desperation sometimes drove mourners to rig their graves with outright booby traps. Spring‑loaded guns, hidden spikes, and even alleged land‑mine‑like devices were concealed beneath coffins. One Dublin report claimed a grieving father planted a literal land mine beneath his infant’s coffin.
Whether such extreme measures were genuine remains debated, but no resurrection men were known to have triggered them. The public outcry over these tactics helped spur legislative change.
The 1832 Anatomy Act in England, along with similar statutes abroad, finally curbed the black‑market trade in bodies by providing legal sources for medical schools. This legislation allowed surgeons, students, and researchers to study cadavers without resorting to grave‑robbing, granting the dead the peace they had been denied for so long.