What does Mortuary mean?

Answer 1

A mortuary is a place where bodies are kept. In the older days mortuaries were not really funeral homes but places where a person who has just been pronounced dead is kept for a few days to make sure that the person died. Today this is not necessary, but today's term for a mortuary is basically a funeral home. But one big difference is that a funeral home was often equipped with an upstairs apartment that a family would move into, in order to be with the remains located downstairs, until the funeral services were completed. A mortuary was simply one that was absent such an apartment.