Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus.) a railway compartment with no access to other compartments, usu. on a rural railway line.

1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 1 Oct. 13/2: It was a wet day, and the St. Kilda cemetery was three miles distant, yet whenever I looked out of the dog-box there was the wet, shabby individual keeping well abreast of us.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 7 Aug. 4/5: I can’t make out how they cam to be in there [i.e. the women’s carriage] unless the SA railways were short of ‘dog boxes’ .
1915		F. Garrett diary 9 May 🌐 Marched out of camp and entrained at Palais de Kubbah, 40 carriages, III Class dog box.
1955		D. Niland Shiralee 221: He got in a dog-box and stretched out on one seat with a paper over his face.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 37/2: dogbox cramped quarters, originally the guard’s van cage.

2. (Aus.) a substandard railway carriage.

1905		N. Spielvogel Gumsucker on Tramp 44: I found [...] railway cars worse than the worst Australia possesses. The one I came down here in was a dogbox [AND].
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 25 Mar. 1/1: The second-class dog-boxes contribute much to the gloom of a journey [and] a huge bonfire would remove some highly-objectionable rolling stock .
1928		M. Forrest Reaping Roses 50: Wanted to know why the blasted old ‘dog-box’ of a car had to come at all [AND].

3. (Aus./N.Z.) any small, cramped room or house.

1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Nov. 10/3: Writer knows one leading street in a large Sydney suburb where three good stone-built shops are in a chronic state of emptiness, while three unsightly wooden dog-boxes, run up within the last few months, are always occupied. [Ibid.] 13 Oct. 11/4: Sydney [...] during the next 18 months or so will decide for many years if it is to continue a conglomeration or hovels and dog-boxes, or become the great gem city of the South Pacific. [...] [A] large section of the population is growing up with warped tastes, and prefers to live in dog-boxes, and unless reform comes quickly, the future Sydneyite [...] will be an object living in the kennel by preference.
1909		W.G. Spence Australia’s Awakening 574: The rent-taker was able to secure tenants for any sort of insanitary, old, jerry-built dog-box.
1961		(con. 1930s) D. Behan Teems of Times and Happy Returns 129: Little corporation dog-boxes four miles from the city.
1970		C. Brown Down All the Days 111: Still stuck in that lousy dogbox on the Quays?
1988		see sense 1.
1996		J. Murphy A Picture of Paradise in McGuinness Dazzling Dark Act II: There’s not so much as a dog box.
2018		C. Hammer Scrublands [ebook] [T]the utilitarian blandness of this dogbox: a bare fluorescent tube for a light, a sagging bed with brown spread, the chemical stench of air freshener, a grunting bar fridge and a clanking air-conditioner.

4. (Aus. prison) a cubicle.

1962		B. McGhee Cut and Run (1963) 104: We were installed in the ‘dog-boxes’ [...] These little compartments were about three feet square, with a wooden seat embedded in one wall [...] Here, incoming and outgoing prisoners strip for bathing and medical inspection.
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 90: Dog-boxes are just steel cubicles with perspex windows and bars.
1986		J. Campbell Gate Fever 18: Gavin Price was brought in and placed in a dog box, one of a row of cubicles facing the officer’s desks.

5. (N.Z. prison) the office used by prison employees; a sentry box, a watctower.

1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 90: Clarry would often be sitting in his dog-box all lunchtime working the switches which open and close the doors. Dog-boxes are just steel cubicles with Perspex windows and bars, so that the screws inside them were as much prisoners as we were.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 58/1: dog box n. 1the prison officials’ office [...] 4 the sentry box, watchtower, lookout.

6. (N.Z. prison) in court, the dock or witness stand.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 58/1: dog box n. 2 the witness stand. 3 the dock.

7. (N.Z. prison) the solitary confinement or punishment cell.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 58/1: dog box n. 6 the solitary confinement punishment cell.