Mors

In my family history research using old church registers, I’ve been coming across some marvellous archaic terms.  One is a mortcloth.  First large mortcloth, second large mortcloth, first small morcloth, second small mortcloth and even velvit [velvet] mortcloth.  The word appears on death records and has a price attached.  In my ignorance, I thought it might be the cost of a shroud to bury a person in, but I’m only half right. Googling it, I found this.

A mortcloth (from the Latin word mors, mortis, meaning ‘death’) was a form of pall, i.e. a large cloth (usually black) thrown over a coffin or corpse at a funeral. Mortcloths were kept by kirk sessions (church courts in each parish). Some were more elaborate than others, and a wealthier parish might have more than one (including a small one for corpses of children). They were hired, usually by the family or next of kin of the deceased, to cover the coffin (if a coffin could be afforded), or the corpse itself (if a coffin could not be afforded).

I’ve found those charges for my lot ranging from 10 shillings to £6. One family elder had a velvet mortcloth and also had the bells tolled for him – a pricey business for a man who was a burgess (part of a tanner’s guild) of the town.

Footnote This post first appeared in curlsdiva.com on April 14, 2009, before folkarethething.com existed. I’m transferring all genealogically related posts from that blog to this.