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You all get a bonus castle today. This one was close enough to my bus route back that I decided to stop. It's called Udny Castle and the estate's gatehouse is right off of Udny Green on the #64 bus route. It is privately owned, but there is a public path you can take, just stay to the left once inside the gate. The dates of construction are fairly uncertain on this one.
It has a three story base which is very thick walled, about eight feet thick. This isn't typical of later day tower houses, so it might be that the first three stories were built in the 15th century, then it became ruinous and the owner decided to remove the existing battlements and then build it upwards higher. There is an indentation which is visible in the pictures showing the line of new construction, set slightly onward from the edge of the previous construction.
The bartizans and Garret probably come in still later. There are descriptions of many owners being ruined by the construction and some even died. A bit of a cursed history of revisions. Just don't mess with the place anymore, it is perfect the way it is just now.
Udny has one other odd little attraction located across the green from the castle entrance. It is just visible on the right hand side and it caught my eye and I had to investigate. It's a building called a Mort House, which was designed to help corpses rot quickly so that body thieves wouldn't steal the bodies to sell to medical schools and doctors wishing to brush up on their anatomy.
This one was built in the very early 1830's and finished around the time a new law went into effect which gradually ended the wave of body thieving which was a constant worry of newly bereaved loved ones across Scotland.
Before this law, stealing bodies wasn't technically illegal, because of a loophole where dead bodies didn't technically belong to anyone. A dead body can't belong to the deceased...because they're dead and can no longer own property.
You could get arrested for grave robbing if you stole the rings, jewelry, clothing of a corpse, because those valuable possessions belonged to whoever inherited the deceased person's property. But, if you dug up a body, undressed it and left the rings and such behind? Well, up to 1832 the law would struggle to find something for which to arrest you.
Now, there is the famous case of Burke and Hare, who came up with an innovative way of getting enough fresh corpses to meet burgeoning demand - they made them, by murdering folk. There, the crime being committed was murder, though.
Corpse thieving by so called Resurrection Men gradually came to an end with the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which required licensure for dissecting corpses, and also provided a ready supply via unclaimed bodies from hospitals, prisons and work houses. The need for bodies were met and selling of bodies no longer profitable. The law is still in effect, somewhat amended, today.
Thanks for the explainer about corpse stealing. I mean we all benefit from doctors who know their anatomy, but I didn't realize that the path there was quite so grim and ruled by profit motives.
@OskarImKeller A body could apparently fetch between 7 and 10 pounds at a time when you could rent a flat in the the New Town section of Edinburgh for $30 to $60 a year. So, conceivably just six prime quality corpses could pay your rent in a nice place for a year. Burke and Hare decided digging was too much effort and just got people drunk and then smothered them to produced said first rate corpses.
On the flip side, people were making money from preventing corpses from being robber. You could rent mortsafes, a kind of cage that went over the coffin until the body within was sufficiently rotted to no longer be commercially viable, a place within a mort house or some cemeteries had full time night watchmen and little guard shacks.
@OskarImKeller I think these, from Alloway's old kirk may be examples of mort guards with their lids intact. I remember seeing them during my first trip to Scotland and thinking they were probably something like mortsafes, and snapped a few pictures, but wasn't as informed then.
I think there's a mortsafe at the cathedral in the city where I'm now and I've been meaning to get up there anyways.
Having a bit of a slow day today as I overexerted myself yesterday and got a bit dehydrated.
@OskarImKeller Found a wikipedia page for the one I visited yesterday. Turns out there was a committee to oversee its construction and ongoing use and they came up with a bunch of rules and fee structures for how it was to be used. You could be either a subscriber, or if there was additional free space available in the mort house you could rent one of the eight available spaces on the turntable at the committee's discretion.
@OskarImKeller Coffins had to be built to a particular specification to properly fit on the turntable and if the person died of an infectious disease, the coffin had to be completely sealed in lead or tin to prevent leakage of potentially infectious fluids and whatnot.
@OskarImKeller I'm not sure how onerous the costs of coffin, mort house rental and lead sealing might have been on the average person. It seems like they had some sort of sliding scale for use of the house, so they probably charged more if you were rich than if you were poor. I do know that a lot of time a coffin and bier was something you temporarily rented for a service and then the body was placed in the ground in a simple shroud, which obviously made it much easier to snatch.
@OskarImKeller I've been to one church which has a old wheeled bier, St Eadburgha's in Broadway, England. No idea if it was rented for services or if it was free to use by the family of parishioners.
@OskarImKeller There was room for innovation/variation too. I encountered this solution to the problem at the West Highlands Museum in Fort William. They call it a Coffin Guard (tm). It would have gone around the coffin and then there would have been a heavy metal lid which is missing. Presumably there was some sort of lock to make sure it couldn't be easily removed until the body within was sufficiently decayed. Not sure how it is an improvement on a mortsafe cage, but it exists.
Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •This one was built in the very early 1830's and finished around the time a new law went into effect which gradually ended the wave of body thieving which was a constant worry of newly bereaved loved ones across Scotland.
Before this law, stealing bodies wasn't technically illegal, because of a loophole where dead bodies didn't technically belong to anyone. A dead body can't belong to the deceased...because they're dead and can no longer own property.
Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Now, there is the famous case of Burke and Hare, who came up with an innovative way of getting enough fresh corpses to meet burgeoning demand - they made them, by murdering folk. There, the crime being committed was murder, though.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_…
series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1828
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Corpse thieving by so called Resurrection Men gradually came to an end with the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which required licensure for dissecting corpses, and also provided a ready supply via unclaimed bodies from hospitals, prisons and work houses. The need for bodies were met and selling of bodies no longer profitable. The law is still in effect, somewhat amended, today.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatom…
1832 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Act of Parliament 2 & 3 Will 4 c. 75
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •I've seen mortsafes before in Scottish burial yards, but never mort house, so this one was new to me. Learn something new every day.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortsa…
contraption for protecting graves from body snatchers
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Oskar im Keller
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Oskar im Keller • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Oskar im Keller • • •Oskar im Keller
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Oskar im Keller • • •@OskarImKeller I think these, from Alloway's old kirk may be examples of mort guards with their lids intact. I remember seeing them during my first trip to Scotland and thinking they were probably something like mortsafes, and snapped a few pictures, but wasn't as informed then.
I think there's a mortsafe at the cathedral in the city where I'm now and I've been meaning to get up there anyways.
Having a bit of a slow day today as I overexerted myself yesterday and got a bit dehydrated.
Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •@OskarImKeller Coffins had to be built to a particular specification to properly fit on the turntable and if the person died of an infectious disease, the coffin had to be completely sealed in lead or tin to prevent leakage of potentially infectious fluids and whatnot.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udny_Mor…
morthouse in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Infoseepage
in reply to Infoseepage • • •Nanook
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