The Kirkyard

The years between 1810 and 1830 were the boom years for bodysnatchers who robbed recent graves and sold the bodies to the doctor surgeons in the growing medical schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow for anatomical dissection. Eventually a series of murders committed by Burke and Hare in Edinburgh , to provide the surgeons with yet more bodies, led to public outrage and the Government passed an Act in 1833 regulating by licence the Schools of Anatomy. This is the background to the building in the Kirkyard of Cadder of the "Watch House" and the existence of the "Mort Safe", as in many churchyards of the same period in Scotland. The mort-safe, which required many men to lift, was placed over a newly interred coffin for several days then removed for re-use, while after a funeral a small group of relatives and church office-bearers would mount a guard for several nights in the watch house, often armed with an ancient blunderbuss to strengthen their courage.

This is a story reported in the Glasgaw Herald on Monday 17 November 1823.

On Friday morning last, the grave of a woman who had been buried about a fortnight ago in Cadder Church-yard, in the neighbourhood of this city, was observed to have been disturbed; on which it was again opened, the lid of the coffin found broken, and the body away. - The husband and some of his friends came immediately to the Police Office, Glasgow, and gave information, and a search was made in all the anatomical schools in town, by the friends themselves accompanied by the Superintendant of Police; but the body was not found. - Last night a considerable party from Cadder collected about several of the classrooms, and some fears were entertained about the safety of the buildings. On a representation by the Superintendant, of the searches that had been made by him accompanied by her friends, and the latter declaring that they considered themselves satisfied, they dispersed. - From the exertions of the Police, the body has this forenoon been discovered in the rear of a house in Castle Street, Stirling's Road.