A police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. It was used in some countries, most widely in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s.[1][2] Unlike an ordinary callbox, its telephone was located behind a hinged door so it could be used from the outside by anyone, and the interior of the box was, in effect, a miniature police station for use by police officers to read and fill in reports, take meal breaks and even temporarily hold detainees until the arrival of transport.
The typical British police box contained a telephone linked directly to the local police station, allowing patrolling officers to keep in contact with the station, reporting anything unusual or requesting help if necessary. A light on top of the box would flash to alert an officer that they were requested to contact the station.[3] Police boxes were usually blue, with the most notable exception being Glasgow, where they were red until the late 1960s.[3] In addition to a telephone, they contained equipment such as an incident book, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit.[3] Labelled a "British icon" by the Plymouth Herald, the blue Metropolitan Police boxes, designed by Gilbert Mackenzie Trench in 1929, became Britain's most recognisable police boxes.[1][4] The blue police box is associated with the science fiction television programmeDoctor Who, in which The Doctor's time machine, a TARDIS, is disguised as a British police box.[1][5]
United Kingdom
An 1894 advertisement for the "Glasgow Style Police Signal Box System", sold by the National Telephone Company
The first public police telephones in Britain appeared in Glasgow in 1891. These tall, hexagonal, cast-iron boxes were painted red and had large gas lanterns fixed to the roof, as well as a mechanism which enabled the central police station to light the lanterns as signals to police officers in the vicinity to call the station for instructions. As with Chicago's boxes, the original intent was that trusted members of the public would be allowed access to the telephone in case of emergency using a special key that was registered to them, which would remain trapped in the lock until released by a master key carried by a policeman.[3]:5 A newer, rectangular type of cast-iron police box was introduced in Glasgow in 1912, but with the signal light now powered by electricity rather than gas, and access to the telephone now restricted solely to the police.[3]
Rectangular, wooden, garden shed style police boxes were introduced in Sunderland in 1923 by Chief Constable Frederick J. Crawley, and then in Newcastle in 1925 when he took over as Chief Constable there.[6] Crawley was arguably the first proponent (at least in Britain) of the concept of the police box as a miniature police station rather than just a communications point, including unrestricted access to the telephone by the general public for contacting police, ambulance, and fire services.[7] His well-publicised success with these boxes, and the revised policing methods they allowed, soon led to the adoption of similar police box systems in many of the larger cities in the north of England, including Manchester and Sheffield.[8]
A 1929 Mackenzie Trench design police box preserved at the National Tramway Museum in Crich, Derbyshire. Between 1929 and 1938 approximately 1,000 of these were built, with 685 installed in London.
The Metropolitan Police (Met) introduced police boxes throughout London between 1928 and 1937,[10] and the design that later became the most well-known was created by the Met's own surveyor and architect, Gilbert Mackenzie Trench, in 1929.[11][12] Between 1929 and 1938 around 1,000 examples of the Mackenzie Trench police box were installed. They measured 9ft 4in (2.84m) tall, and 4feet 6inches (1.37m) wide.[9]
History
Initially, two competing prototype designs were installed on the newly built Becontree Estate in December 1928, with the winning builder being contracted to erect 43 boxes made of wood with concrete roofs in the final Trench pattern as part of experimental installations in the Richmond and Wood Green sub-divisions, which were completed in December 1929 and January 1930 respectively.[8] Their success resulted in the widespread adoption of the system throughout Greater London over the next eight years using newer models of the Mackenzie Trench design now made completely of concrete for increased durability, save the doors, which were still made of teak.[8] Constables complained that the concrete boxes were extremely cold and damp compared to their wooden predecessors, so provisions were made for more powerful heaters.[8] For use by officers, the interiors of the boxes normally contained a stool, a table with drawer, a brush and duster, a fire extinguisher, a first aid kit, and a small electric heater.[10] Like the 19th and early 20th century Glaswegian boxes, the London police boxes had a light at the top of each box, which would flash as a signal to police officers indicating that they should contact the station.[10]
This police box (left, pictured in the late 1920s) at the south east corner of Trafalgar Square in London was constructed in the base of the lamp plinth. Today it is used for storage.
By 1953, there were 685 police boxes on the streets of Greater London,[13] with an additional 72 smaller police posts, also designed by Trench, used in the inner divisions where there was no space for the larger kiosks.[8] Between 1923 and 1960 the police box and/or post system had been adopted by most of the provincial police forces throughout Great Britain.[8] The design and construction of the police boxes used in each system were at the discretion of each individual force, and consequently varied a great deal from location to location, but the police pillars/posts were usually one of three successive models provided by the General Post Office (GPO).[8]
Police boxes continued to play an important role in police work until the late 1960s to early 1970s, when they were phased out following the introduction of personal radios. As the main functions of the boxes were superseded by the rise of portable telecommunications devices like the walkie-talkie and the near universal access by the public to telephones and the 999 emergency number, very few police boxes remain in Britain today. Some have been converted into High Street coffee bars. These are common in Edinburgh, though the city also has dozens that remain untouched — most in various states of disrepair. Edinburgh's boxes are relatively large, and are of a rectangular plan, with a design by Ebenezer James MacRae, who was inspired by the city's abundance of neoclassical architecture.[14] At their peak there were 86 scattered around the city. In 2012, Lothian and Borders Police sold a further 22, leaving them owning 20.[15]
A slightly modified Mackenzie Trench police box, coloured red, as seen in Glasgow
Beginning in 1933, a slightly simplified version of the Met's police box design was also used by the City of Glasgow Police when its old cast-iron police boxes were replaced by an expanded Crawley type of integrated police box system. This was done as part of the restructuring of the force brought about by Percy Sillitoe after he was appointed Chief Constable at the end of 1931. Like the cast-iron boxes before them, the new concrete boxes continued to be painted red until the popularity of Doctor Who prompted a change to blue in the late 1960s.[3]
In 1994, Strathclyde Police decided to scrap the remaining Glasgow police boxes.[16] However, owing to the intervention of the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust and the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, some police boxes were retained and remain today as part of Glasgow's architectural heritage.[16] At least five remain—on Great Western Road (at the corner of Byres Road); Buchanan Street (at the corner of Royal Bank Place); Wilson Street (at the intersection of Glassford Street, completely restored); one on Sauchiehall street at the junction with West Nile Street and one near the corner of Cathedral Square (at the corner of Castle Street, also restored). There was also a red police box preserved in the Glasgow Museum of Transport but this was returned to the Civil Defence Trust after Glasgow City Council decided it did not fit in with the new Transport Museum. The police boxes in Glasgow on Great Western Road, Cathedral Square, and Buchanan Street are currently under licence to a Glasgow-based coffee outlet.[14]As of 2009[update], only the Great Western Road and Buchanan Street boxes have been transformed to dispense beverages, and restrictions are enforced by the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust to prevent the exterior of the boxes from being modified beyond the trademarked design.
Dinky Toy police box manufactured in the 1940s by British toy company Meccano Ltd, based on the mk1 design.
The Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust now manages 11 of the UK's last Gilbert Mackenzie Trench police boxes on behalf of a private collector. Another blue police box of this style is preserved at the National Tramway Museum, Crich, Derbyshire. One of the trust's boxes stands outside the Kent Police Museum in Chatham, Kent,[17] and another at Grampian Transport Museum. An original MacKenzie Trench box exists outside of the Metropolitan Police College (Peel Centre) at Hendon.
In the City of London, there are eight non-functioning police "call posts" still in place which are Grade II listed buildings.[18] The City of London Police versions were cast iron rectangular posts, as the streets are too narrow for full sized boxes. One compartment contained the telephone and another locked compartment held a first aid kit. Fifty posts were installed in the "Square Mile" from 1907; they were in use until 1988.[19]
On Thursday 18 April 1996,[20] a new police box based on the Mackenzie Trench design was unveiled outside the Earl's Court tube station in London, equipped with CCTV cameras and a telephone to contact police.[10] The telephone ceased to function in April 2000 when London's telephone numbers were changed, but the box remained, despite the fact that funding for its upkeep and maintenance had long since been exhausted. In March 2005, the Metropolitan Police resumed funding the refurbishment and maintenance of the box.
Glasgow introduced a new design of police boxes in 2005. The new boxes are not booths but rather computerized kiosks that connect the caller to a police CCTV control room operator. They stand 10 feet in height with a chrome finish and act as 24-hour information points, with three screens providing information on crime prevention, police force recruitment and tourist information.[21]
Manchester also has Help Points similar to those in Glasgow, which contain a siren that is activated upon the emergency button being pressed; this also causes CCTV cameras nearby to focus on the Help Point.
Liverpool has structures similar to police boxes, known as police Help Points, which are essentially an intercom box with a push button mounted below a CCTV camera on a post with a direct line to the police.
Boscombe in Bournemouth opened its own old-style police box in April 2014 in a bid to tackle crime in the area.[22] The box contains a yellow phone for when it is not staffed by police, along with security cameras and a defibrillator.
City of London launched in February 2021 a competition to bring a back a new and updated police box to its streets.[23] Whether if these new boxes will have any similarity to the old London police boxes remains to be seen.
The BBC science-fiction television series Doctor Who features a time machine, the TARDIS, disguised as a Mackenzie Trench-style police box. In the show, although a TARDIS is normally capable of disguising itself to blend in with its surroundings, the ship's "chameleon circuit" broke down in England in 1963, and left the TARDIS seen most often in the show stuck as a police box, except for a brief period in one adventure seen in 1985. Doctor Who was originally broadcast from 1963 to 1989; as police boxes were phased out in the 1970s, over time the image of the blue police box became associated as much with Doctor Who as with the police. In 1996, the BBC applied for a trademark to use the blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who.[24] In 1998, the Metropolitan Police filed an objection to the trademark claim, maintaining that they owned the rights to the police box image. In 2002, the Patent Office ruled in favour of the BBC, arguing that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police—or any other police force—had ever registered the image as a trademark.[5][25][26] In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police.[25] The series was revived in 2005, and the police box continues to feature prominently in almost every episode.
Although the dimensions and colour of the TARDIS used in the series have changed many times, none of the BBC props has been a faithful replica of the original MacKenzie Trench model. This has been explained within the context of the show that chameleon circuits tend to display a bit of "drift" if left in the same setting for too long, and in any case the circuit of the Doctor's TARDIS is malfunctioning.[27] This was acknowledged in the episode "Twice Upon a Time" which had the Twelfth Doctor meet the First Doctor, and had the original incarnation and Bill Potts point out the visible differences between the modern and original TARDISes.[28][29]
United States
The first police telephone was installed in Albany, New York in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Call boxes for use by both police and trusted members of the public were first installed in Chicago in 1880, initially housed in kiosks to protect the inner signal boxes from the weather and to limit access to them so as to discourage false alarms.[30] In 1883, Washington, D.C. installed its own system; Detroit installed police call boxes in 1884, and in 1885, Boston followed suit.[3]:3 These were direct line telephones usually placed inside a metal box on a post which could often be accessed by a key or breaking a glass panel. In Chicago, the telephones were restricted to police use, but the boxes also contained a dial mechanism which members of the public could use to signal different types of alarms via telegraph: there were 11 signals, including "Police Wagon Required", "Thieves", "Forgers", "Murder", "Accident", "Fire" and "Drunkard".[3]:4
Gallery
A modern police box in Baltimore, Maryland; based on the British concept
Fire alarm and police call box in San Francisco, California; one of 2,040 and 460[31] in the city
This police box in Edinburgh now serves as a coffee shop.
This police box in Edinburgh now serves as an art gallery.
Police telephone post (not functional) at St. Martin's Le Grand, London — painted (incorrectly) in 'Met' dark blue. 'City' boxes were painted in a light blue.
A 1929 police box that stands on Surrey Street, outside Sheffield Town Hall. It is still used as a post for city ambassadors, providing tourist information.
The sonic screwdriver is a fictional multifunctional tool in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who and its spin-offs, used by the Doctor. Like the TARDIS, it has become one of the icons of the programme, and spin-off media such as The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood have replicated its functions in devices such as the sonic lipstick, sonic blaster, sonic probe, sonic modulator and sonic cane.
The TARDIS is a fictional hybrid of a time machine and spacecraft that appears in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its various spin-offs. While a TARDIS is capable of disguising itself, the exterior appearance of the Doctor's TARDIS typically mimics a police box, an obsolete type of telephone kiosk that was once commonly seen on streets in Britain. Paradoxically, its interior is shown as being much larger than its exterior, commonly described as being "bigger on the inside".
A payphone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic public areas. Prepayment is required by inserting money, swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card. In the 20th century, payphones in Spain and other countries took locally-sold tokens instead of legal-tender coins.
The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar.
Glasgow Queen Street is a passenger railway terminus serving the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland. It is the smaller of the city's two mainline railway terminals and is the third busiest station in Scotland behind Central and Edinburgh Waverley.
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth door while using the payphone inside.
Street furniture is a collective term for objects and pieces of equipment installed along streets and roads for various purposes. It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traffic signs, bus stops, tram stops, taxi stands, public lavatories, fountains, watering troughs, memorials, public sculptures, and waste receptacles.
Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air museum of rescued buildings which have been relocated to its site in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Founded in 1963 and opened in 1967, the museum was conceived following the dismantling of a 15th-century timber-framed house in Bromsgrove in 1962 to provide a location for its reconstruction. It became England's first open-air museum and, after the St Fagans National Museum of History in Wales, the second in the United Kingdom. This building is known as the medieval 'Town House' today, though it has been known by other names in the past, including the 'Bromsgrove House' and the 'Merchant's House'. It now houses a collection of domestic, industrial, agricultural and other forms of historic building, the majority dismantled and re-erected.
The War Machines is the tenth and final serial of the third season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in 4 weekly parts from 25 June to 16 July 1966.
Logopolis is the seventh and final serial of the 18th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 28 February to 21 March 1981. It was Tom Baker's last story as the Fourth Doctor and marks the first appearance of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Janet Fielding as new companion Tegan Jovanka.
A post box, also known as a collection box, mailbox, letter box or drop box is a physical box into which members of the public can deposit outgoing mail intended for collection by the agents of a country's postal service. The term post box can also refer to a private letter box for incoming mail.
"Father's Day" is the eighth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on 14 May 2005 on BBC One. It was written by Paul Cornell and directed by Joe Ahearne. It was one of three Doctor Who episodes that year to be nominated for the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
The London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS) is an NHS trust responsible for operating ambulances and answering and responding to urgent and emergency medical situations within the London region of England. The service responds to 999 phone calls across the region, and 111 phone calls from certain parts, providing triage and advice to enable an appropriate level of response.
An emergency telephone is a phone specifically provided for making calls to emergency services and is most often found in a place of special danger or where it is likely that there will be a need to make emergency calls. It is also sometimes known as blue lights.
On 29 June 2007, two car bombs in London were discovered and disabled before they could be detonated. The first device was left near the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket at around 01:30, and the second was left in Cockspur Street, located in close proximity to the nightclub.
The Glasgow Airport attack was a terrorist ramming attack which occurred on 30 June 2007, at 15:11 BST, when a dark green Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane canisters was driven at the glass doors of the Glasgow Airport terminal and set ablaze. The car's driver was severely burnt in the ensuing fire, and five members of the public were injured, none seriously. Some injuries were sustained by those assisting the police in detaining the occupants. A close link was quickly established to the 2007 London car bombs the previous day.
Since the first broadcast of the British science-fiction television serial Doctor Who in 1963, there have been a number of exhibitions of props, costumes and sets relating to the show throughout the United Kingdom. Some have been intended to be permanent, and others seasonal; most have been staged at existing tourist locations. None is currently open to the public.
The Somerton TARDIS is a Police box on Acacia Avenue beside the B4237 road in the Somerton area of Newport, South Wales. This police box is the only remaining one of four that were in Newport. It is a Grade II listed building.
The KX series of telephone boxes in the United Kingdom was introduced by BT in 1985. Following the privatisation of BT in 1984, the company decided to create a newly designed and improved take on the British telephone box, which at this point consisted of only red telephone boxes which BT had recently acquired, the most common being the iconic K6 box. These red boxes were considered flawed in parts by BT for several reasons, including cost, lack of ventilation, accessibility and maintenance. BT announced the £160 million series of new boxes, the KX series designed by GKN, as well as announcing the eventual replacement of all existing telephone boxes. The main telephone box in the KX range is the KX100. Upon launch, there were five models in total. The boxes were produced at a rate of 5,000 a year, with the total count of all BT-owned kiosks reaching 137,000 by 1999, a number which has since decreased by more than seventy per cent.
Gilbert Mackenzie Trench (1885–1979) was a Scottish architect, and the surveyor to the Metropolitan Police between 1920 and 1945. He is credited as the designer of the police telephone box, which has since become a pop culture icon owing to its immortalisation as the space-time machine of Doctor Who.
1 2 "The Police Boxes". Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust website. Archived from the original on 30 April 2001. Retrieved 23 January 2007.
The TARDIS Library, archived from the original on 18 April 2017, retrieved 27 September 2004 — a guide to the various police box props used in Doctor Who over the years, and their relationship to real police boxes.
McPherson, Ian, "The Police Box page", Kiosk Korner, archived from the original on 22 January 2007.
"The Great Edinburgh TARDIS Quest", Flickr, Yahoo!, 5 August 2005 — set devoted to tracking down remaining Edinburgh police boxes.
Steven, Michael ‘Mike’, "Police Box Typology", Carbon Made — fine art policebox photographic typology.
"Earliest Glasgow police box discovered", Dr Who (news), UK: The BBC, 1 September 2005, archived from the original on 23 December 2006
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