Mortsafe

ABDAN:6001

Model of a mortsafe from Kirkton of Skene. A heavy section of stone has metal bars attached at all edges. The metal bars would be inserted into the ground with the heavy slab onto of the grave. The model is stored upside down laying on the stone to avoid damaging the bars.

Label Reads: 'By pyramid or mausoleum or private vault, the rich have always tried to protect, from the depradations of graverobbers. The weath they took to the tomb, but during a short 'resurrectionist' period at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries the profits lay in the corpse itself not in its accoutrements. Because the pauper was as vunerable as the plutocrat safeguarding the subjects needed a communal solution. The best protection was delay until the ravages of time could foil the bodysnatcher and the simplest barrier was a grantite slab too heavy for two men to raise rough hewn to coffin shape and laid on the new grave. This the resurrectionists circumvented by digging down beyond the slab and withdrawing the body through the coffin-end so that more elaborate forms of mortsafe had to be devised.

Kirkton of Skene

stone, metal