Famous Graves

From The Guardian

The curse of grave-robbers dates all the way from the pyramids to the “resurrectionists” who in the early 19th century would supply colleges training future surgeons with bodies for students to practise on by disturbing the recent dead. So much so that some cemeteries built watchtowers or offered “mortsafes”, lockable iron cages to place over graves (still to be seen in situ in some Scottish kirkyards). Others opted for a warning on the tombstone, as may be the case with Shakespeare’s grave, inside Holy Trinity Church Stratford-upon-Avon. His dates (1564-1616) are followed by a verse that ends: “Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he who moves my bones.”