That meant that the needs of medical students and doctors to dissect and study human bodies had to be met in other ways.
The resurrectionists in the late 18th and early 19th century supplied the necessary cadavers for sale from those freshly buried in cemeteries. The authorities turned a blind eye to the actions of these bodysnatchers.
By 1816, families and cemeteries had begun to fight back with watchers and mortsafes.
Watchers were paid or volunteered to watch over a fresh grave until the forces of decomposition had rendered the cadaver useless for medical study.
The mortsafe (meaning to keep the dead safe) was a device designed to prevent the resurrectionists from gaining access to the grave.
A mortsafe was often a heavy weight on top of an interlaced network of wrought iron or a closely fitted iron box or even a net of wrought iron.
At its heart, a mortsafe was designed to thwart resurrectionists from gaining access to a grave until it was too late.
At the time, Scotland had the most advanced medical faculty in any university in the British Empire, so it needed access to large numbers of cadavers for its students.
It also had Protestant sects that believed that resurrection on the Last Day could only occur if the body was intact.
Thus, mortsafes became widespread in Scotland at the time. Some mortsafes could be rented from the local parish until its task was done.
Modern-day archaeological excavations have revealed that the resurrectionists were agile in defeating mortsafes.
They simply dug down under the protection of night and removed the cadaver from the narrow end of the grave, often leaving soil, rocks or even parts of the mortsafe in the coffin.
The resurrectionist trade and the protections needed against it finally came to an end when it became clear that grave-robbing was insufficient to supply the required numbers of cadavers.
Instead, the resurrectionists began murdering to maintain their supply. A high-profile murder case in 1828 saw Burke and Hare and their wives charged with murder.
They had smothered at least 16 people to supply cadavers to the university at $16 each.
Hare turned King’s evidence in return for immunity. Burke was convicted and executed. In a moment of poetic justice, Burke’s cadaver was publicly dissected.
His skeleton can still be inspected at the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh Medical School.
When other murders for the supply of cadavers were detected in London and their perpetrators hanged in late 1831, the Imperial Parliament, at last, felt the weight of public opinion and enacted the Anatomy Act 1832.
This allowed for the lawful dissection of any bodies unclaimed within 48 hours from workhouses.
The act was another reason for people to avoid the workhouse if at all possible.
In Australian cemeteries with early graves, mortsafes can still be occasionally seen. Unlike the Scottish mortsafes, the Australian ones were never rented.
They were designed to lie permanently over and around the grave. Ballarat has one in a traditional form, and Benalla has a modified one dating from 1852 to protect the bodies of two infants.
With its chest-high spiked fence, Benalla’s mortsafe is designed to prevent access to the surface of the grave.
That it was still thought necessary to erect a mortsafe in 1852 suggests that fear and dread associated with the work of resurrectionists still existed 20 years after the Anatomy Act 1832.
— John Barry
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