mort house

plural mort houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of morthouse.

   As a result, coffin collars, mortsafes, and mort houses were employed in Scotland to prevent grave robbing.

   2015, Clifford A[lan] Pickover, “1832: Resurrectionists: William Harvey (1578–1657), William Burke (1792–1829)”, in Death and the Afterlife: A Chronological Journey from Cremation to Quantum Resurrection, New York, N.Y.: Sterling, →ISBN, page 113

   2 more examples

   The corpses were kept safe in mort houses, such as Udny’s, built in 1832 by Alexander Wallace and Thomas Smith. Those who had subscribed to the cost had free use of the mort house for themselves and their descendants; non-subscribers had to pay a fee. Characteristic of such mort houses as that in Mortlach kirkyard (NJ 323 392), Udny is a formidable building, without windows and strongly doored – once by the outside door of oak and again by an inner sliding iron door.

   1991, Ross Leckie, “Udny Mort House, Udny Green, Gordon”, in Grampian: A Country in Miniature, Edinburgh: Canongate, →ISBN, chapter 3 (Churches, Clerics and Catechism), page 65

   Graves were dug deeper than the customary six feet and layered with branches to hamper the urgent spades of resurrection men, mort stones, or huge stone slabs, were placed on top of new graves until the contents were too decomposed to be worth unearthing, locked mort houses, or dead houses, were used to store the newly dead and, most effective of all, volunteer guards were placed at graveyards, hunting the hunters.

   2015, Malcolm Archibald, “Bodysnatchers”, in Liverpool: Gangs, Vice and Packet Rats: 19th-Century Crime and Punishment, Edinburgh: Black & White Publishing, →ISBN, chapter 2 (The Early Years), page 17