Coffin guard
subject: Highlands
description: This is a coffin guard or mort safe and is designed to prevent body snatchers stealing the corpse of someone who has recently died. In the early 18th century medical schools in Scotland started to use dissection methods to teach the medical sciences. They general used executed criminals, but found demand out stripped supply. This gave rise to a trade in body snatching, stealing bodies from fresh graves and selling them to anatomists. The practice shocked society, but no effective deterrent was found until around 1816 when the iron coffin guard was invented. It was placed around and over the coffin. This one is missing its lid. It would protect the body until it had decayed suitably to make body snatching undesirable to the thieves. These were expensive to make, so only the rich could afford them. Sometimes churches would buy them and hire them out. This guard was from the old Glen Nevis cemetery in Fort William. It is one of the museum’s most sinister objects.
creator: Victorian
source: objects,highlandlife
date: 19th century
contributor: eulac3d
type: Physical Object