Urbex: Morgue P, Down South, United Kingdom – December 2013 (revisit)

Phil Armour says:

Cool and creepy. When I was 18 years old and before I went to university I worked at a mortuary in a major hospital in South Wales. Not this one. Much smaller. Ah, but these photos brought back memories.

We only had two dissecting tables (for the autopsies) and I think room for eight folks in the fridge. Plus a small chapel for viewing and identifying the deceased. The chapel was quiet and solemn and was entered through a separate door of course—you wouldn’t want to be bringing the relatives in through the room while the pathologist is pathologising. No sir.

On the wall was an amazing collection of tools: saws, hammers, drills, scalpels, tweezers, and what could only be described as meat cleavers. All for opening up and whacking bits off dead people. Stuff from a Hammer movie. In the fridge were trays on which we laid the corpses. You can see them in one of the pictures in this collection. The trays allowed you to slide people in and out easily. Rather like having a vegetable tray in your fridge at home only a bit less vegan. I got into trouble several times for putting bodies into the fridge without propping up their heads. Once rigor mortis sets in they become as stiff (!) as a board and the pathologist would have difficulty doing a brain autopsy since the back of the skull would be lying on the table. To open the skull would then require either propping up the whole body or hanging the head over the end of the table. Not very elegant.

Our mortician, by the name of Harold, had been doing the job for over 40 years and it had seriously affected his sense of humour. He was known to carry an embalmed hand around in his pocket just on the off chance that someone would ask: “Harold, can you lend me a hand?…” Ha Ha! What a tight-slapper! He once brought a complete fresh (?) brain into the porters’ lodge in a brown paper bag and pretended it was his lunch. Fingers would turn up on odd places, assorted body parts in drawers. Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears… Oh my, what a card was Harold!
Harold had a fund of stories which he was always happy to share. Stories of corpses farting, twitching, eyes suddenly opening, even spontaneously sitting up. The size of a tumour (football), the smell of gangrene (not nice).

When I left to go to college Harold was still working there even though he was way past retiring age. They couldn’t find anyone to do his job. I wonder why?

Night shift at the hospital was always a challenge. We would have maybe a dozen people die a in a week; usually geriatric or casualty. The first rather predictable, the second rather grisly. Fetching a body and taking it back to the mortuary was never a highlight of the night shift, especially if you had to do it on your own as I had to a couple of times. Heck it wasn’t nice at noon so it was really morbid at midnight. In and out. Really quickly. Hoping to NOT hear the squishy slap of undead feet behind you or even one of Harold’s twitchy or flatulent cadavers.

So thanks for bringing back all these wonderful memories!

PROJ3CTM4YH3M says:

February 13, 2014 at 5:38 pm

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the comment and I am glad the photos brough back some positive memories for you! I was really shocked at the size of this morgue, never really found out why it was so large in terms of capacity. Thanks for some of the stories Harold sounds like a right laugh 🙂

all the best

PM