Before the Anatomy Act (1832) the legal supply of bodies in Britain for medical dissection and was characterised by endemic and chronic shortfalls. By the late eighteenth century, British anatomists had fostered an extraordinary illegal and clandestine market supplied by ‘Bodysnatchers’ (aka ‘Resurrectionists’), who primarily stole corpses from burial grounds. Societal response to this activity included a commercialisation of grave protection and the emergence – particularly in London – of new products for mortuary security. Based on preliminary findings from my ongoing PhD research on the history of bodysnatching in London, this paper presents an interdisciplinary case study of the 1818 patent iron coffin of Edward Lillie Bridgman, which was expressly designed to thwart bodysnatchers by being effectively impregnable. It builds on existing scholarship with extensive new archival research and draws on material remains, newspaper advertisements and reports, parochial and nonconformist records. Contextualised within broader contemporary funerary trade, this paper presents new findings which provides a better understanding of Bridgman’s business and presents new evidence of who he was, how he traded, how he marketed his coffins, how successful there were, who purchased (or opposed) them and why.