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 watchtower.

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.
1999		D. Looser ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 29: dog box n.2. The guard house.
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.