mort-house

plural mort-houses

1. alternativeAlternative form of morthouse.

   Mort-houses were solidly-built windowless vaults, with massive walls and heavy wooden and metal doors. Bodies were stored in these buildings until they had decomposed and were then buried in the usual way.

   2014, Alix Wood, “Mortsafes and Towers”, in Body Snatching (Why’d They Do That? Strange Customs of the Past), New York, N.Y.: Gareth Stevens Publishing, →ISBN, page 23

   2 more examples

   The watchmen in the mort-houses and towers were usually relatives and friends of the dead person, but sometimes the bereaved family paid for professionals to keep watch, but this could lead to bribery between the resurrectionists and the hired guards.

   1972, Norman Adams, “. . . And Booby-Traps”, in Dead and Buried? The Horrible History of Bodysnatching, Aberdeen: Impulse Books, →ISBN, page 50

   Early in the 19th century, Udny Green churchyard was a favourite haunt of resurrectionists who dug up freshly interred corpses to sell to the medical school at Aberdeen. To prevent this, in 1832 the villagers built a mort-house where they kept the newly dead for a while before burial.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 388