Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Scots / Ulster) the kitchen sink.

1849		Glasgow Herald 7 Dec. 4/5: A party of svene women were brought [...] on a charge of having the jaw-box in tenement [...] where they reside, in a filthy and dirty state.
1854		Dundee Courier 15 Mar. 4/6: The indignant old lady very coolly emptied the jar of its contents into the jawbox.
1862		Dundee, Perth & Cupar Advertiser 18 July 6/4: There were streaks of blood on the side of the jaw-box, which might have got there when a person was in the act of wringing a bloody cloth.
1879		Glasgow Herald 12 Feb. 10/2: [advert] Five Rooms and kitchen to Let, fitted up with Kitchen Ranges, supplying hot water to jawbox, bath, etc.
1883		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 23 Apr. 2/3: She stated that she had given birth to a child [...] and that she had [...] hid it underneath the jawbox in her father’s kitchen.
1890		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 27 Mar. 2/8: A sad case of child murder [...] the body was lying in the jaw-box.
1901		Eve. Post 31 Jan. 4/1: As a Glasgow writer wittily remarked, ‘We took cholera morbus to the jaw-box and washed him down the sink’.
1915		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 22 Mar. 3/7: ‘Yer mither used to wash ye in the jaw-box.’ For the benefit of the Saxon [...] ‘jaw-box’ in English is ‘sink’.
1929		Dundee Courier 8 May 6/4: The ‘spigot’ and ‘jawbox’ meant the tap and the sink.
1935		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 25 Nov. 2/6: With the jaw-box filled to the brim, Tam plunged his weary arms in the water.
1942		Post (Lanarks.) 29 Mar. 7/5: Only in recent years has the jawbox bath become an out-moded institution.
1977		(con. 1920s–30s) S. McAughtry Sinking of the Kenbane Head 14: There, by the jawbox, were the usual black bottles.
1997		Share Slanguage.