Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the mouth.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Bone box, the mouth. Shut your bone box; shut your mouth.
1809		G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1812–82		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1821		‘A Real Paddy’ Real Life in Ireland 19: ‘How could I be after missing him when he laid so fair?’ ‘Fair in your bone-box! you foul galoosh!’.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
1858		A. Mayhew Paved with Gold 190: Jack jerked his drumsticks against Ned’s ‘bonebox,’ with a force that must have loosened every tooth.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1868		J.D. McCabe Secrets of the Great City 359: The Detectives’ Manual gives a glossary of this language, from which we take the following specimens [...] Bone box. – The mouth.
1881		Trumble Sl. Dict. (1890).
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 11: Bone Box, the mouth.
1906		Minneapolis Jrnl (MN) 24 Jan. 19/3: Bone-box —the mouth.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks.
1938		Aus. Women’s Wkly 5 Mar. 40/4: They thought the Marshal Prince von Blucher a rum touch if ever there was one, opening his bone-box to splutter out his Achs, and his Mein Gotts, and his Fery Goots!

2. (US) a coffin.

1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. 10/2: The Parson is on the highfly in a fantail banger and a milky mill toy. He got the cant of togs from a shickster whose husband’s in a bone-box. [translation] The ‘Parson’ is begging as a poor gentleman in a long broadcloth coat and a while shirt. He talked the change of clothes from a lady whose husband is buried.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 21 Dec. 11/2: Old Stiffun, the undertaker [...] had a nice, second-hand, silver-mounted, satin-lined bone-box.
1906		Gt Southern Herald (Katanning, WA) 19 May 3/1: He did not know whether they referred to the person who ordered the bone box or the corpse itself, so in great agitation he hurriedly interviewed the undertaker.
1936		L. Pound ‘American Euphemisms for Dying’ in AS XI:3 201: Bone box.
1943		J. Mitchell McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (2001) 73: He is opposed to the use of coffins (he calls them ‘boxes’ or ‘bone boxes’).
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1976		Pensacola News Jrnl (FL) 2 June D1/5: It has been tagged as a crate, a bone-box, an oak overcoat, a six-foot bungalow, a shell. Chicago gangland mentioned it [...] as a wooden kimono.

3. the head.

1886		Capricornian (Rockhampton, Qld) 3 Apr. 22/3: The cell, and connecting canal to hold the protoplasm, corresponds to the ‘dome of thought’, the bone box, as it has been called, to hold the brain and the rib-woven tube of the spinal cord.
1904		Sun (Kalgoorlie) 16 Oct. 7/3: Prof. Tucker was consulted, and after the stupendous grey matter in his bone-box had been brought to bear on the question, it was decided to lay out the boodle on a scholarship for poets. Rats!
1940		S. Longstreet Decade 310: Where are you, Ivar Kreuger, match king of the world? A world panic brought you in. A world panic and futile strategy took you out. A shot into the brain in a Paris hotel room – and, poof, out you go like one of your matches. Scratch yourself on the bone box and good-bye, pal.
1945		Western Mail (Perth) 17 May 15/2: Then the fight began. [...] He never throws a candle away, determined to keep his ivory polishers on the alert; and when he could not set them to work on the bone-box he blew at the bellows and left his mark a little higher up.

4. (Aus.) a rickety rattling vehicle.

1912

Eve. News (Sydney) 24 Oct. 6/4: [T]axpayers are of necessity compelled to travel by rattle-waggon, bone-box, or brakevan, on business or pleasure, wholly destitute of seating accommodation.

5. (Aus.) a dice box.

1915

Truth (Brisbane) 25 July 12/4: If you see Fatty Mack anywhere, you can tell him from me that I haven’t dropped acrost a bloke in all me travels that could rattle the bone-box like him.

6. (US) an ambulance.

1975		L. Dills CB Slanguage.
1978		Liberman & Rhodes CB (2nd edn) 131: Bone box – Ambulance.

7. (US prison) a hearse.

1992

Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 104: Bone Box A hearse.