Police box
Encyclopedia
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
kiosk or callbox
Callbox
A call box or callbox is a box containing a special-purpose direct line telephone or other telecommunications device, which has been used by various industries and institutions as a way for employees or clients at a remote location to contact a central dispatch office.- Police and taxicab...
located in a public place for the use of members of the police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
, or for members of the public to contact the police. Unlike an ordinary callbox
Callbox
A call box or callbox is a box containing a special-purpose direct line telephone or other telecommunications device, which has been used by various industries and institutions as a way for employees or clients at a remote location to contact a central dispatch office.- Police and taxicab...
, its telephone is located behind a hinged door so it can be used from the outside, and the interior of the box is, in effect, a miniature police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
for use by police officers.
Police boxes predate the era of mobile telecommunications; now police officers, in many countries, carry two-way radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
s and/or mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s rather than relying on fixed kiosks. Many boxes are now disused or have been withdrawn from service.
The typical police box contained a telephone linked directly to the local police station, allowing patrol
Patrol
A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as police officers or soldiers, that are assigned to monitor a specific geographic area.- Military :...
ling 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 he/she was requested to contact the station. Members of the public could also use the phone to contact a police station in an emergency.
British police boxes were usually blue, except in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, where they were red until the late 1960s. In addition to a telephone, they contained equipment such as an incident book
Incident book
An incident book is a book used for recording injuries, crimes, and other incidents; they are included in British police boxes, hospitals, and other locations in which an incident is to be reported or treated....
and a first aid kit
First aid kit
A first aid kit is a collection of supplies and equipment for use in giving first aid, and can put together for the purpose , or purchased complete...
. Today the image of the blue police box is widely associated with the science fiction television programme
Science fiction on television
Science fiction first appeared on a television program during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality; this makes television an excellent medium...
Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, in which the protagonist's time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, a TARDIS
TARDIS
The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
, is in the shape of a 1960s British police box. In the context of a TARDIS, the image of the blue police box is a trademark of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
.
History
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....
invented the device. Call boxes for use by both police and members of the public were first installed in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
in 1883; Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Detroit installed police call boxes in 1884, and in 1885 Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
followed suit. These were direct line telephones placed 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: there were eleven signals, including "Police Wagon
Police car
A police car is a ground vehicle used by police, to assist with their duties in patrolling and responding to incidents. Typical uses of a police car include transportation for officers to reach the scene of an incident quickly, to transport criminal suspects, or to patrol an area, while providing a...
Required", "Thieves
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
", "Forgers
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
", "Murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
", "Accident
Accident
An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its...
", "Fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
" and "Drunkard
Drunkenness
Alcohol intoxication is a physiological state that occurs when a person has a high level of ethanol in his or her blood....
".
The first public police telephones in Britain were introduced in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
in 1891. These tall, hexagonal, cast-iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
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.
Rectangular, wooden police boxes were introduced in Sunderland in 1923, and Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
in 1925. The Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
(Met) introduced police boxes throughout London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
between 1928 and 1937, and the design that later became the most well-known was created for the Met by Gilbert MacKenzie Trench in 1929. Although some sources (e.g.,) assert that the earliest boxes were made of wood, the original MacKenzie Trench blueprints indicate that the material for the shell of the box is "concrete" with only the door being made of wood (specifically, "teak"). Officers complained that the concrete boxes were extremely cold. For use by the officers, the interiors of the boxes normally contained a stool, a table, brushes and dusters, a fire extinguisher, and a small electric heater. Like the 19th century Glaswegian boxes, the London police boxes contained a light at the top of each box, which would flash as a signal to police officers indicating that they should contact the station; the lights were, by this time, electrically powered.
By 1953 there were 685 police boxes on the streets of London. Police boxes played an important role in police work until 1969-1970, when they were phased out following the introduction of personal radios. As the main function of the boxes was superseded by the rise of portable telecommunications devices like the walkie-talkie
Walkie-talkie
A walkie-talkie is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald L. Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, and engineering teams at Motorola...
, very few police boxes remain in Britain today. Some have been converted into High Street
High Street
High Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...
coffee bars. These are common in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, 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 inspired by the city's abundance of neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
. One police box situated in the Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
town of Newtown Linford
Newtown Linford
Newtown Linford is a linear village in Leicestershire, England.It is located in a valley in the Charnwood Forest area, and has four access roads. The first is from Anstey, then there are roads which lead to the A50 at Groby and at Markfield...
is still used by local police today.
In 1994 the Strathclyde Police
Strathclyde Police
Strathclyde Police is the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council areas of Argyll and Bute, City of Glasgow, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and West...
decided to scrap the remaining Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
police boxes. 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. At least four remain—on Great Western Road (at the corner of Byres Road
Byres Road
Byres Road is a street located in Hillhead, Glasgow and is the central artery of the city's West End.- Location and history :Byres Rd is a mixed commercial, shopping and upmarket residential area consisting largely of traditional sandstone tenements with retail premises on the ground floor and...
); Buchanan Street
Buchanan Street
Buchanan Street is one of the main shopping thoroughfares in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. It forms the central stretch of Glasgow's famous shopping district with a generally more upmarket range of shops than the neighbouring streets: Argyle Street, and Sauchiehall Street.-History:...
(at the corner of Royal Bank Place); Wilson Street (at the intersection of Glassford Street, recently completely restored); and one near the corner of Cathedral Square (at the corner of Castle Street, also recently restored). There was also a red police box preserved in the Glasgow Museum of Transport
Glasgow Museum of Transport
The Glasgow Museum of Transport in Glasgow, Scotland was established in 1964 and initially located at a former tram depot in Pollokshields. From 1987 the museum was relocated to the city's Kelvin Hall...
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 is leased as a coffee and donut kiosk, Cathedral Square is Leased as the "Tartan Tardis," selling Scottish memorabilia, and Buchanan Street are currently under licence to a Glasgow-based ice cream outlet. , 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.
The Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust now manage eleven of the UK's last "Gilbert Mackenzie Trench" Police Signal Boxes on behalf of a private collector. Another blue police box of this style is preserved at the National Tramway Museum
National Tramway Museum
The National Tramway Museum, at Crich, in Derbyshire, England, is situated within Crich Tramway Village, a period village containing a pub, cafe, old-style sweetshop, including the tram depots. The village is also home to the Eagle Press, a small museum dedicated to Letterpress Printing including...
, Crich
Crich
Crich is a village in Derbyshire in England. It has the National Tramway Museum inside the Crich Tramway Village, and at the summit of Crich Hill above, a Memorial Tower for those of the Sherwood Foresters regiment who died in battle, particularly in World War I.Built in 1923 on the site of an...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
. One of the Trust's boxes stands outside the Kent Police Museum
Kent Police Museum
The Kent Police Museum is located within the Chatham Dockyard, in the English county of Kent. It is situated close by the Commissioner's House. The museum is staffed by volunteers, and is open from February through to November....
in Chatham, Kent. and another at Grampian Transport Museum. An original MacKenzie Trench box exists in the grounds of the Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
College (Peel Centre) at Hendon
Hendon
Hendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...
. There is no public access, but it can easily be seen from a Northern Line
Northern Line
The Northern line is a London Underground line. It is coloured black on the Tube map.For most of its length it is a deep-level tube line. The line carries 206,734,000 passengers per year. This is the highest number of any line on the London Underground system, but the Northern line is unique in...
tube train travelling from Colindale
Colindale
-Transport:*Colindale tube station, on the Northern Line Edgware branch, is situated on the north side of the east-west Colindale Lane.-Development:...
to Hendon Central (on the left hand side).
In 1997, a new police box based on the Mackenzie Trench design was erected outside the Earl's Court tube station
Earl's Court tube station
Earl's Court tube station is a London Underground station in Earls Court. The station is located between Earls Court Road and Warwick Road . It is on the boundary of Travelcard Zone 1 and 2 and is in both zones....
in London, equipped with CCTV
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
cameras and a telephone to contact police. The telephone ceased to function in April 2000 when London's telephone numbers
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
The UK telephone numbering plan, also known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, is the system used for assigning telephone numbers in the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies...
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
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
resumed funding the refurbishment and maintenance of the box (which is something of a tourist attraction, thanks to the Doctor Who association — see below).
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 ten 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 even tourist information.
Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
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.
Doctor Who
The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
science-fiction television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
features a time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
, the TARDIS
TARDIS
The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
, disguised as a Mackenzie Trench-style police box; normally capable of disguising itself to blend in to its surroundings, the ship's chameleon circuit broke down 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 transmitted 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
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
to use the blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who. In 1998, the Metropolitan Police filed an objection to the trademark claim, maintaining that they owned the rights
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
to the police box image. In 2002 the Patent Office
United Kingdom Patent Office
The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom is, since 2 April 2007, the operating name of The Patent Office. It is the official government body responsible for intellectual property rights in the UK and is an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
ruled in favour of the BBC, pointing out that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police—or any other police force—had ever registered the image as a trademark. In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise
Doctor Who merchandise
The long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who has since its beginnings in the 1960s generated many hundreds of products related to the show, from toys and games to picture cards and postage stamps. This article is not an exhaustive list of merchandise but attempts to present...
based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police. The series was revived in 2005, and the police box continues to feature prominently in almost every episode.
However, although the dimensions and colour of the TARDIS' used in the series have changed many times, none of the BBC props have, in fact, been a faithful replica of the original MacKenzie Trench model.
External links
- Metropolitan Police - History of the police box
- The TARDIS Library - A guide to the various police box props used in Doctor Who over the years, and their relationship to real police boxes
- The Police Box page - from Ian McPherson's Kiosk Korner
- The Great Edinburgh TARDIS Quest - Flickr set devoted to tracking down remaining Edinburgh police boxes.
- Police Box Typology - Fine Art Policebox Photographic Typology
- Earliest Glasgow police box discovered
- PoliceBoxes.com - Catalogue of model police boxes
- http://www.tramway.co.uk - Website of the National Tramway Museum, Crich, Derbyshire