Life in the Mortuary BBC Scotland Investigates

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

Each year in Scotland thousands of deaths are unexplained.

It's the job of the mortuary staff to find the answer.

Tonight, they take the BBC behind the scenes

in Edinburgh's City Mortuary,

and give a revealing insight into, not only how we're dying,

but how we're living in Scotland today.

'There's been a murder.' It's nothing like Taggart.

This is their story in their own words.

'Every day I walk in here I'm facing death.

'It's now coming up for 19 years that I've worked in the mortuary.'

'It turned out a very interesting job, there's no two days the same.

'It's not the type of job you're going to get bored at.'

'My alarm goes off in the morning, I get in my car and come down here.

'We open up the mortuary and initially what we've got to do is

'check the book of the dead to see if any bodies have come in overnight.'

'I was actually amazed myself that I actually felt OK.

'At first I thought there was something wrong with me.'

Watch me bits!

'There is that kind of wall that you've got to put up,'

or you might have some issues.

Some people stay with you.

They don't upset me, but you don't forget the faces,

you don't forget the circumstances. But I didn't put them here.

I'm not religious in any way, but, to me, they're empty shells.

If they were a person, the person that was there has now gone,

has left that body, left the empty shell

that I've got to take into our care

and treat with the greatest respect, as well.

But it's not somebody I've had personal contact with,

so I can disassociate myself that way.

The only thing I would say I don't like -

but I do put up with them and deal with them - is maggots.

They just get everywhere and stick to your gloves

and it is no consolation whatsoever

that they're only interested in dead flesh, as opposed to living flesh.

That's no consolation at all.

There's been a few bodies deposited overnight.

The first thing we do in the morning is pull them out,

check the name bands, check their ID,

and we'll weigh and measure them, as well.

On average, we maybe do about six post-mortems per day.

The most we've ever done in one day is 18.

I'm getting too old for this.

Somebody's jumped from a bridge in Edinburgh.

He's obviously whacked his heid cause his heid's gone totally.

He's hit the back of his head.

Has he been in the hospital?

Because I did notice there's a bandage on the sleeve.

Well, I'm still to get medical stuff.

Because that could be a needle puncture mark.

I don't think anything could bother me now,

I think I've seen all there is to see.

'So, I've seen people in house fires,

'people that have been stabbed, shot, assaulted, beaten up,

'people that have slit their wrists and throats and stuff.

'I've seen some dramatic stuff.'

It's different every day and there's always something new happening,

and you cannae beat it.

A public mortuary has a connection in terms with the legal services.

The Procurator Fiscal in Scotland has the remit

of investigating all sudden, unexpected deaths

which haven't otherwise been accounted for.

ECHOING VOICES

-You want the decomp?

-Yes, bring him up, please.

So the right kidney, is 150 grams...

No obvious tattoos or anything.

This post mortem involves a young man who has got one or two

past medical histories, he's also noted to be a heavy drinker.

He's been with friends one afternoon.

There's a possibility he's then gone to source some illicit drugs,

and the following day he's found in water,

his body is discovered in water.

I mean, the issues for us are,

is his death going to be related to alcohol or drug intoxication?

Is there a possibility that his death has been due to drowning?

Given the possibility here of a suspicious mode of death,

you really want to exclude that the individual's neck was compressed.

So, I'm doing that and looking at the muscles of the neck

where we might see bruising if that was a possibility.

Pathology is the backbone of medicine.

Once upon a time, you were ex-communicated

if you've touched a dead body.

But, when people were allowed to start dissecting dead bodies,

that's when we learned about disease.

All naturale.

'It's our job to assist the pathologist'

to make his findings.

'He'll do what's called an external examination,

'where he'll look for any injuries or anything,

'look at the eyes, the eye colour, teeth.'

I'm the man that's got to open the body.

Generally, what we like to do is a straight line incision

which comes from just under your trachea

down to just past your belly button.

So, we'll open the body that way, reflect all the fat and the muscle,

take out the chest bones and then, in one fell swoop,

take the organs from the tongue down to the bladder in a oner.

Do you want to have a look at these lungs, Claire, while you're there?

He's got quite hyper-expanded lungs, they're pretty full.

Yeah, probably are, they're probably full of fluid.

And he may have a lot in his stomach, as well.

Water in the stomach or something. We'll see what there is.

We'll extract them, put them in a receptacle.

Tony'll take them to the dissecting bench.

He'll do what he has to do with them,

dissect them and looking for cause of death.

What we have here are very expanded lungs.

Normally, they would sort of sit a bit lower down

and you can see the front of the cavity where the heart sits,

but here the lungs are filling right across.

And when I opened the chest, that's why I asked Claire to come over,

cos again they were filling right across the chest.

They're very expanded, you don't expect to see them so full.

So, at this stage I think drowning's certainly a possibility.

In the meantime, I'll have reflected the scalp,

taken the saw and opened the skull cap, removed the brain,

'shown the inside of the head

'to make sure there's no injuries or fractures in there,'

and, while he's dissecting everything,

it's my job to reconstruct, so I'll start stitching everything up.

It's nice interacting with different specialties.

You interact with law enforcement,

lawyers, investigators - it's very fulfilling in that sense.

You're really, you're not just stuck in your office all day,

you're actually doing other things, talking to people.

It's a very nice job, actually, it's very interesting.

First section, cause of death 1A,

drowning in brackets pending further investigations in brackets.

Background circumstances - he was a known heavy drinker

and an apparent user of illicit drugs full stop.

So the cause of death at this stage will be drowning

and then, in all likelihood, there will be something added

to the cause of death based upon the toxicology.

It sounds like from the police that drug or alcohol intoxication

is the likeliest cause.

Drug users die of lots of things.

It's an extraordinary condition, and, you know,

being medically involved with managing drug users,

there's just this bewildering

array of serious illnesses associated with drug use.

More than half of the bodies that we're storing,

at any one given time, I would say half them

have all got something to do with drugs.

BOISTEROUS SHOUTING AND LAUGHTER

Oh, like it!

'Perry was like, he was very outgoing,

'he was always up for life, he actually loved life.

'He loved his body, he kept on going on about upper body strength all the time.'

I went in the room, Perry was lying there...

He was lying sprawled across the bed.

And I touched his foot, I kicked his foot - nothing.

And that's when it struck me.

I just knew, I just knew, I hadn't seen him...

'We do have a drug problem that's bigger in Scotland,'

so the more drug users you have, the more deaths you'll have.

And the underlying concern is that we have probably

more drug users per head of population than we do in England,

and certainly, according to most reports,

we have a higher prevalence of drug use than most parts of Europe.

'We had to go to the mortuary and identify Perry.'

It is a surreal moment when you think about it,

because see it on the TV programmes and all that, and...

..the anticipation...

..of what you're going to see.

Certainly an experience I never,

ever want to have to go through again.

We see quite a lot of drugs-related deaths.

Sometimes you can go for ages with none,

and then maybe there's a bad batch of something going about

and then we get maybe four, five over the course of a week.

'It's just a steady, steady flow of drug users'

just dying - it's constant.

Since I started here five years ago, it's just unreal.

67 kilos.

'The family and police have arrived,'

so they're just co-ordinating all that downstairs at the moment.

Once the ID's over and done with,

then the body will go in the lift and come up.

Anybody that's abused drugs we class as a high risk case,

but it's anything like, anybody that's got like HIV,

Hep C, TB, things like that, anything that that could be

transferred from them to us while we're doing the autopsy.

Other bodies have passed through here - almost unknown to us -

but they're extreme high risk, what we call extreme high risk.

That's a body that came in, it had anthrax.

That's a killer

We're putting masks on because we're treating these as high risks,

just in case there's any splash when we're dissecting the body.

It saves you inhaling it or eating it.

SONG: "Nessun Dorma"

HE SINGS ALONG

We'll send these for toxicology...

..and they'll determine amounts of alcohol or drugs in the system.

We didn't realise that it was an anthrax case

until the toxicology was tested,

'which is two or three weeks down the line.

'Then we realised that we had an anthrax case in

and this place got shut down for two or three days to get sterilised,

'and all instruments that were used in that case were disposed of.'

We've cleaned with the highest power disinfectant that we can use,

so it's clinically clean, it's not sterile.

And it has been proven, we've had swabs taken from the place

that proved we were cleaner than some operating theatres

in some hospitals not too far away,

but I'm not going to mention any names.

You've got a job to do, you get it done.

Everybody's the same - you come up, batter into your work, get it done,

just get down the stairs for food.

Time to get everything off,

empty the buckets and get downstairs for some lunch.

Lunchtime! SHE LAUGHS

The job actually makes me very hungry,

really hungry and that's why I eat all the time.

I don't know what it is and I'm not the only one.

Like, we'll have students that have not been here before

and they'll say to me, "I'm really hungry." And I just say,

"Oh, that's the cannibal in you coming out."

It kind of worries them.

Humour has to be a part of the job or we'd all be mad,

we'd all be slashing our wrists and ending up on the autopsy

tables ourselves. And it may look to others

as if we're being disrespectful,

but it's just, for us, it's a coping mechanism.

And it's...and it's certainly black humour.

Oh, long hair.

It's just as well we were juniors for Vidal Sassoon.

It's not us being disrespectful to anybody.

It's just how we, as a group, use it as a coping mechanism.

Maybe some people expect if you work in a mortuary

you're all doom and gloom and long-faced.

And that's obviously not the case wi' us anyway.

But even outside the PM room and in the tea room,

we're always having a laugh and a carry on

and I think that's just us, basically.

-I thought you had a couple of dates last week.

-Got stood up, you mean.

So what happened then? Why was it cancelled?

Her husband came back.

THEY LAUGH

Hey, there's nae need for that!

So this is the only public area of the mortuary,

where members of the public are allowed in and it's for this reason,

for coming in for the purposes of ID or for viewing or for both.

So, the family would come in.

We know the body's at the other side of the glass.

Either myself or the police officer that's escorting the family

will come in, and obviously the lights are a bit dimmer,

and it'd just be a matter of...

..just opening up the blinds

to reveal their loved one on the other side.

It IS important that the pathologists

always have at the back of their minds, not just the deceased,

very, very important because that's what they're working with,

the material they're working with, but the bereaved.

And the bereaved NEED to be helped as much as one can.

I'd expect anybody else to treat me or mine

the same way that I'd treat everybody that passes through here.

There's always somebody else in the background.

This is a very important job, I would say.

I don't think there's a huge amount of people would do it,

but it's very important because you need to know

how people have passed away and their families need to know as well,

for closure, and somebody's got to do the job.

OK, the first case this morning is a young male in his 40s

who's been found at home after taking his own life.

He's got a ligature round his neck

and there was a suicide note found on the premises.

There are about 780 suicide deaths a year in Scotland.

The rate is around 80% higher in Scotland than in England

and Wales, if you take that over a number of years.

I think a lot of the cases are really sad that these people

feel that they haven't got anybody to turn to,

even though some of them do have family that care.

But I suppose if you're maybe depressed

or you've got other medical issues,

you might feel that you're completely on your own.

Any society that's...that has a claim to be a society

and to have some compassion must worry

if young people are deliberately taking their lives.

A lot more people are losing their jobs,

worried about money...

or it's a relationship issue. We find that with the young people.

It's usually they've had a fall out with... It's usually a girlfriend.

Young boys, you know. It's a shame.

The economic situation has been explored

in quite a number of recent studies,

and showed, that for every 1% increase in unemployment

there was about a 1% increase in suicide.

If they do leave a note, finance is usually mentioned

somewhere along the lines or family have indicated in the police report

that, you know, they were...the family or the person

were in financial, you know, difficulties.

I think we have to be on our guard that the suicide rate doesn't

increase over the next few years because that's likely to happen.

INTERNAL PHONE

-'Hello?'

-Hi, one in the lift. Next one, please.

There's different things,

odd bit and bobs that are...

are lodged within the mortuary.

Like a leg that we've got there,

that we've had for a number amount of years.

It was found in the water,

and they reckon it's possibly someone that's come off a boat,

fell overboard and been either diced up by the propellers

or something like that. And so far they've only found a leg.

So we've got a Polish sailor's leg in the mortuary.

But, er, if anybody's missing one...

I think it's been here since the '70s.

I think I vaguely remember somebody saying '74.

Something like that, but way before my time.

Photographs of bodies that came in the '30s.

What about the one with the dodgy looking characters?

There's some dodgy looking characters in here.

That'll be the murder victim the murder weapon and the murderer.

It's just interesting to look at cases from years ago.

This young lady was murdered by John Henry Savage,

who was executed by Ellis.

Hanging, mummification on Rose Street.

So he's mummified, he's all dried out,

and there's a wee newspaper clipping there as well

from 17th May 1934.

It's quite cool.

'If a decomposed body, which has died, it's concealed,

'it's been lying there for months and gone into decomposition.'

Oh, we've got maggots.

'The ones that come from houses, very sad.'

They live alone, keep theirself to theirself,

they've no next of kin, they've no family,

they've no friends, so nobody's missed them.

Years ago, when I was a kid, you went and visited your granny

every week, once or twice a week,

even though she hated you and she kicked you oot in the garden.

But there was more family interaction, I think, then.

Now people's lives are too busy, I think.

You're too busy living your own life to actually get out

and interact wi'...with others.

And it's really sad that these people pass away on their own,

and they're not found until maybe a bill hasn't been paid

or somebody wants to read their gas meter and sticks their nose

through their letter box and gets a bit of a stink, you know.

A lot of gas men find a lot of bodies, it would seem.

So, I feel sorry for them.

Surely, surely somebody oot there must have known that person

and missed them.

It was a support worker that found him.

He approached the house

and noticed the smell.

It's funny saying you can taste the smell, but you can.

I'm trying to relate it to something that it smells like.

But...

I suppose if, if there's something in your fridge that's gone off,

try and multiply that 100 times and you might get close.

It clings to your hair and your clothes,

like, it really clings and when you're on the train

and it's maybe summer, and, you know, the windows are open

and you get the odd smell coming past, I just sit there thinking,

"Oh, please, nobody think it's me.

"Don't sit next to me".

It all depends on the condition of where the body is. If it's...

even if the body's been in the house,

if a window's been left open, and a bluebottle gets in

then all it needs to do is fire in there,

lay a few eggs and your body's covered in maggots.

Unfortunately, after a PM like that everything tends to be a bit greasy.

You'll be surprised even when decomposed bodies come in

at the amount of family that suddenly appear,

and, "Oh, my God, oh! What's happened?"

But they couldnae been that concerned for him

if they've nae seen him for 12 weeks, know what I mean?

Family can stay two or three doors away

and the person could be lying decomposed.

Never see them for a year.

"I didnae talk to him, he doesnae talk to me, so..."

Decomposed bodies are coming here every week.

So...

You think about, now, if you cast your mind,

if you think about Edinburgh now, there's probably about five or six

decomposed bodies lying now, not been found.

Friends, we gather here today at what for us is a time of sadness.

It's inevitable and right that we should feel such sadness

and to wish to express it, too.

Bodies that go through the City Mortuary

will only come to us as a Council Funeral

once everything's been established.

Once the Procurator Fiscal's satisfied with the cause of death

and the police are finished their investigations

and there's no family, they will then come to us.

There shall be no more night, and they will not need lamps

nor sunlight because God will be their light.

A Council Funeral is treated the same as any other funeral.

If there's no family members, it'll just be the hearse.

They'll come up to the chapel doors,

the body will come in exactly the same way as any other service.

We'll provide a minister,

and the only difference is there'll be nobody there.

When I was first ordained,

you were maybe talking 3-4% of funerals perhaps,

but certainly over the last 12 months that's been much nearer 20%.

We're as vulnerable the moment we're born as we are

at the point we die.

And we're as under other people's control at those two points,

the start and finish of our lives.

Birth and death are the only two places in life

where we're all truly equal.

We don't talk about death. Mexicans celebrate it.

We put it under the carpet and it's never mentioned.

I'm not scared to die, you know, it doesn't bother me.

It's going to happen. I'd rather not just now,

but that's not for me to say, is it?

An inevitable part of life is death.

It comes to us all.

We're all going to get on that bus.

You're not going to be able to miss it.

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