Objectives: In high-income countries, women in adverse socioeconomic circumstances are at higher risk of stillbirth, have a lower uptake of stillbirth investigation, and are underrepresented in stillbirth research. Our objective was to describe the barriers to conventional postmortem in a community with the lowest rates of stillbirth investigation. Design: Qualitative grounded theory study to construct a thematic analysis. Setting: East London Mosque during Ramadan June 2018. Population: All male and female attendees of reproductive age were invited to participate. Methods: Anonymised questionnaire with five fixed-choice questions on pregnancy loss and acceptability of conventional invasive postmortem and non-invasive postmortem. The fifth question was expanded into free-text to explore barriers to conventional postmortem. Main outcome measures: Primary outcome was barriers to conventional postmortem, and secondary outcome was acceptability of conventional and non-invasive postmortem. Results: 123 questionnaires were included. There were 73 male (59·3%) and 50 female (40·7%) respondents. The primary barriers to conventional postmortem were religious belief, desecration of the body, further emotional pain to the family, and fatalism. 14 respondents would agree to conventional postmortem while 107 would not accept (11·4% versus 87·0%). Nearly all respondents would agree to non-invasive postmortem while nine respondents would still not accept postmortem in any form (92·7% versus 7·3%). Conclusions: In this community the barriers to postmortem are influenced by cultural factors. While conventional postmortem is poorly received, our study suggests high acceptability of non-invasive postmortem. More culturally-appropriate work must be done to improve postmortem uptake in high-risk communities. Funding: No funding obtained.