What Are the Drawers in a Morgue Called?

The sliding compartments in a morgue are most commonly called “body trays” or “morgue trays” within the industry, though the broader refrigerated units that house them go by names like “mortuary refrigerators,” “mortuary coolers,” or “cold chambers.” The word “drawer” is actually the informal term most people use, picked up from crime shows and detective novels, but it is not wrong. Professionals in forensic pathology and funeral services tend to be more specific, distinguishing between the tray itself, the compartment it slides into, and the larger refrigerated cabinet that holds everything together.

The Terms Professionals Actually Use

Walk into a morgue and ask someone who works there, and you will hear a handful of terms depending on which part of the system they are talking about. The flat, sliding platform that a body rests on is typically called a “body tray” or “cadaver tray.” It is usually a stainless-steel shelf mounted on rollers or glides that allow it to slide in and out of the unit smoothly. Some facilities call these “mortuary trays” or simply “trays.”

The individual space that the tray slides into is often referred to as a “compartment” or “cell.” In some facilities, particularly those associated with funeral homes or cemetery operations, you will hear the word “crypt” used for an individual storage bay. This is the same word used for permanent burial vaults in mausoleums, but in a morgue context it refers to a temporary refrigerated space.

The entire refrigeration unit, which may contain anywhere from one to a dozen or more compartments stacked together, is called a “mortuary refrigerator,” “mortuary cooler,” or “body storage unit.” Manufacturers of this equipment market them under names like “mortuary refrigeration systems” or “cold storage cabinets.” In large medical examiner offices, you might hear the whole cold-storage room referred to as “the cooler” or “cold room,” which is distinct from the individual units inside it.

Why “Drawer” Stuck in Popular Language

The reason everyone outside the industry says “morgue drawer” is pretty straightforward: it looks and operates like a drawer. You pull a handle, a flat surface slides out on rails, and you can access what is inside. The resemblance to a kitchen drawer or a filing cabinet is close enough that the word simply stuck in everyday English. Television and film reinforced this further. The dramatic reveal of a body being slid out for identification is one of the most recognizable scenes in crime media, and scriptwriters have always called them drawers because audiences immediately understand the image.

There is no professional objection to the word “drawer.” It just lacks precision. Saying “drawer” does not tell you whether you mean the tray, the compartment, or the entire unit, and in a working morgue that distinction matters. If a morgue attendant needs to report that a tray’s rollers are jammed versus a compartment’s seal is broken versus the whole refrigerator’s compressor has failed, “the drawer is broken” does not help anyone.

How Mortuary Refrigerators Are Built

Modern mortuary refrigerators are industrial-grade stainless-steel cabinets with heavy insulation and dedicated cooling systems. The interior is divided into compartments, each sized to hold one adult body on a tray. Standard compartment dimensions are roughly two feet wide, two feet tall, and about seven and a half feet deep, though exact measurements vary by manufacturer and model. The trays themselves are perforated or ridged stainless steel, designed to allow airflow around the body and to be cleaned and sanitized easily.

The cooling mechanism works like a commercial walk-in refrigerator. A compressor circulates refrigerant through coils, maintaining the interior at a set temperature. For standard short-term storage, this is typically between 2°C and 4°C (roughly 36°F to 39°F). At these temperatures, decomposition slows dramatically without freezing the tissue, which matters for forensic examination and identification. Freezer units, used for longer-term storage, operate at around −15°C to −25°C (about 5°F to −13°F).

Each compartment usually has its own door, either a small individual door that opens to reveal the tray inside or a larger shared door covering a column of compartments. The doors are gasketed to maintain the cold chain, much like commercial food-service refrigeration. Higher-end units feature digital temperature monitoring, alarms for temperature excursions, and locking mechanisms for chain-of-custody security.

Different Configurations for Different Facilities

Not all morgue storage looks the same. The configuration depends on the size of the facility, its case volume, and the types of investigations it handles.

Single-tier units: One row of compartments at roughly waist height. These are the easiest to work with ergonomically because attendants do not have to lift bodies above shoulder height or bend to floor level. They take up the most floor space per body stored.
Multi-tier units: Two, three, or even four compartments stacked vertically. These are common in busy urban medical examiner offices where space is limited. The trade-off is that loading a body into a top-tier compartment or retrieving one from a bottom-tier compartment requires significantly more physical effort.
Roll-in units: Instead of sliding a tray out of a wall-mounted compartment, these systems use free-standing racks or gurneys that roll directly into a refrigerated room. Large-scale operations, disaster response staging areas, and hospital morgues with high throughput often prefer this layout because it accommodates different body sizes and allows faster movement.
End-loading or side-loading: This refers to the orientation of the compartment opening. Most units are end-loading, meaning the tray slides out from one end. Side-loading units open along the long axis, which can be useful in narrow rooms where there is not enough clearance for a full-length tray to extend outward.

Bariatric compartments are increasingly common in newer installations. Standard compartments are designed for an average adult body, but rising obesity rates have pushed manufacturers to offer wider and reinforced trays rated for higher weight capacities. Some facilities retrofit their existing units with heavy-duty tray hardware rather than replacing the entire refrigerator.

The Physical Challenge of Moving Bodies In and Out

Loading and unloading bodies from these compartments is one of the most physically demanding parts of working in a morgue. A body that needs to go into a top-tier compartment might need to be lifted to chest or shoulder height, and a body in a bottom tier might require the attendant to bend nearly to the floor. The body itself is dead weight in the most literal sense, offering no assistance and shifting unpredictably.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when morgue capacity was overwhelmed in some cities, the ergonomic strain on workers became acute. Facilities in New York procured powered scissor lifts and lightweight mortuary cots to reduce the physical toll of repetitive high and low lifts onto shelving. The powered lifts were especially helpful for bariatric cases, while the lighter mortuary cots, which could raise to about 32 inches and lower to 6 inches, became preferred by morgue attendants for transporting bodies between the morgue and temporary body collection points.¹ Shelving in overflow storage areas was also redesigned to be more compatible with this new equipment, reflecting how the design of storage infrastructure and the tools used to interact with it are tightly linked.

Even outside pandemic conditions, musculoskeletal injuries are a recognized hazard for morgue attendants and autopsy technicians. Repeated heavy lifts, awkward postures, and slippery surfaces combine to make the work physically risky. This is one reason single-tier and roll-in configurations are preferred when space and budgets allow.

Morgue, Mortuary, and Funeral Home Storage Compared

The words “morgue” and “mortuary” are often used interchangeably in casual conversation, but they refer to somewhat different settings, and the storage equipment in each can differ as well.

A morgue, strictly speaking, is a facility where bodies are stored temporarily and where autopsies or forensic examinations take place. It is usually part of a hospital, a medical examiner’s office, or a coroner’s office. The storage equipment here is built for functional throughput: easy cleaning, clear labeling, chain-of-custody controls, and compatibility with autopsy tables and forensic procedures.

A mortuary or funeral home is a facility that prepares bodies for burial or cremation. Storage here tends to be less industrial. The refrigeration units may be smaller, and the emphasis shifts toward presentation and family viewing. Some funeral homes use “preparation rooms” with just one or two refrigerated compartments, while larger operations have dedicated cold rooms similar to what you would find in a medical examiner’s office.

In hospital settings, the morgue is often tucked into a basement or lower floor, and it may consist of a single refrigerated cabinet with a handful of compartments, sufficient for holding bodies for a day or two before transfer to a funeral home. These hospital morgues tend to use the simplest equipment: a basic multi-tier mortuary refrigerator, a gurney, and not much else.

Temporary and Emergency Storage

When a mass casualty event, natural disaster, or pandemic overwhelms a facility’s permanent cold storage, temporary solutions come into play. Refrigerated trucks and trailers, the same kind used for food transport, are the most common emergency measure. These are sometimes called “portable morgues” or “temporary morgue facilities.” Inside, bodies are typically placed on shelving racks or directly on the trailer floor, without the individual compartments of a permanent installation.

Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORTs) in the United States deploy with portable morgue equipment that can be set up in tents or existing buildings. These field morgues prioritize rapid identification and processing over long-term storage. The “trays” and “compartments” of a permanent facility are replaced by body bags on portable racks inside refrigerated enclosures. The terminology shifts accordingly: workers in these settings talk about “racks,” “shelves,” and “positions” rather than trays or crypts.

This kind of surge capacity planning became a much more visible topic during COVID-19, when overflow body storage made national news. The images of refrigerated trucks parked outside hospitals brought the usually invisible infrastructure of death management into public awareness, and with it a renewed interest in how morgues are designed and what their components are called.

What Happens at the Tray

The body tray is not just a storage shelf. It is the surface where several important processes begin. When a body arrives at a medical examiner’s office, it is typically placed on a tray still inside its body bag, labeled with identifying information, and slid into a compartment. The tray’s identification tag or label corresponds to case records. In forensic settings, maintaining chain of custody means documenting exactly which compartment holds which body, when it was placed, and who accessed it.

Before an autopsy, the body is slid out on its tray, transferred to a gurney, and moved to an examination room. After the autopsy, it returns to a clean tray and compartment. The trays are sanitized between uses, which is another reason stainless steel is the universal material: it resists corrosion, tolerates chemical disinfectants, and does not harbor bacteria the way porous materials would.

In teaching hospitals and medical schools, cadaver storage for anatomy labs works on a different principle. Bodies donated for education are typically embalmed and stored in tanks or special holding rooms rather than in refrigerated tray-and-compartment systems. The vocabulary shifts entirely in that context: you hear “cadaver lab,” “tank room,” and “dissection table” rather than anything related to morgue drawers.

The People Behind the Equipment

It is worth knowing something about the people who open and close these compartments every day. Morgue attendants, autopsy technicians, and forensic pathology assistants perform physically and emotionally demanding work. The job involves constant exposure to death, bodily fluids, and the grief of families, combined with the repetitive physical strain of moving bodies in and out of storage.

Research on forensic specialists and autopsy technicians has found that meaning and purpose in life, along with general life satisfaction, act as protective factors against occupational burnout. High autopsy workloads and recent direct involvement in autopsy procedures were associated with reduced psychological well-being, underscoring the importance of institutional support for these workers.² The equipment itself, whether it is a smoothly rolling tray or a stuck compartment door, directly affects the daily experience of these workers. A well-maintained mortuary refrigerator is not just a storage issue; it is a workplace quality issue.

Terminology You Might Encounter in Other Countries

English-speaking countries mostly share the same vocabulary, but there are regional preferences. In the United Kingdom, “mortuary” is the more common term for what Americans usually call a “morgue,” and the storage units are often called “body fridges” or simply “fridges” in everyday speech among staff. The formal term remains “mortuary refrigerator.” In Australia and New Zealand, usage is similar to the UK.

In French, the compartments are called “cases réfrigérées” (refrigerated cases) or “tiroirs” (literally “drawers”), and the facility itself is “la morgue,” a word that English borrowed from French in the first place. The original French “morgue” referred to a room in a prison where new inmates were inspected, and it later came to mean a place where unidentified dead were displayed for public identification. That public-viewing function is mostly obsolete now, replaced by photographic or dental records and DNA matching, but the word endured.

In German, the facility is a “Leichenhalle” (corpse hall) or “Leichenschauhaus” (corpse-viewing house), and the storage compartments are “Kühlfächer” (cooling compartments). Japanese facilities use the term “霊安室” (reian-shitsu), meaning “spirit peace room,” a notably more euphemistic approach. These linguistic differences reflect cultural attitudes toward death and the dead, from the clinical precision of German compound words to the spiritual framing in Japanese.

Across all languages and regions, though, the physical object is essentially the same: a refrigerated steel box divided into compartments, each holding a sliding tray. The engineering has not changed dramatically in decades. What has changed is the scale of the systems, the monitoring technology built into them, and the growing recognition that the people who use them deserve equipment designed with their safety and well-being in mind.