File:Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire - geograph.org.uk - 132693.jpg

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English: Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire. During the eighteenth century, medical research at universities was hampered by a shortage of dead bodies upon which to perform investigations. Many bodies, cadavers, were purchased illegally from "resurrectionists" who exhumed recently buried bodies for this purpose.

In Scotland, the fear of bodysnatching, led parishes to invest in methods to protect the deceased. In Udny, they built a Morthouse. This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers.

This one is at Udny in Aberdeenshire.
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Source From geograph.org.uk
Author Lynette and Malcolm Johnson
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Lynette and Malcolm Johnson / Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire / 
Lynette and Malcolm Johnson / Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire
Camera location57° 19′ 38″ N, 2° 12′ 03″ W  Heading=157° Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo
Object location57° 19′ 37″ N, 2° 12′ 03″ W  Heading=157° Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

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This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Attribution: Lynette and Malcolm Johnson
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current05:06, 31 January 2010Thumbnail for version as of 05:06, 31 January 2010640 × 480 (85 KB)GeographBot (talk | contribs)== {{int:filedesc}} == {{Information |description={{en|1=Mort House, Udny, Aberdeenshire. During the eighteenth century, medical research at universities was hampered by a shortage of dead bodies upon which to perform investigations. Many bodies, cadavers

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