The years between 1810 and 1830 were the booom years for bodysnatchers who robbed recent graves and sold the bodies to the docor surgeons in the growing medical schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow for anatomical dissection. Eventually a series of murders committed by Burke and Hare in Edinburgh , to provide the surgeons with yet more bodies, led to public outrage and the Government passed an Act in 1833 regulating by licence the Schools of Anatomy. This is the background to the building in the Kirkyard of Cadder of the "Watch House" and the existence of the "Mort Safe", as in many churchyards of teh same period in Scotland. The mort-safe, which required many men to lift it, was placed over a newly interred coffin for several days then removed for re-use, while after a funeral a small group of relatives and church office-bearers would mount a guard for several nights in the watch house, often armed with an ancient blunderbuss to strengthen their courage.