Did you know that part of the Great Train Robbery money was recovered from a London phone box... as well as a wax dummy of the Queen's brother-in-law?
Today, it's not uncommon to find unusual items in phone boxes, as the moribund kiosks find new purposes. Book swaps, defibrillators, cash machines (themselves slowly becoming obsolete), miniature coffee shops... the one outside the British Museum even has an art-dispenser:
We've looked before at such repurposing. But phone kiosks have a much longer history as repositories for unwanted items. Here, we present some of the more curious booth-based discoveries in London's history.
1939, BOMB: Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, two telephone kiosks in central London were wrecked by bombs. One exploded on the Hampstead Road, and the second nearby on Euston Road directly opposite what is now the Wellcome Collection. One man was injured, and a woman had to be treated for shock. The blasts were later attributed to the IRA. It's an early example of the kind of attack that would become all-too-common later in the century.
1952, FORGED BANKNOTES: Seven crumpled $100 bills were discovered outside a telephone kiosk at an undisclosed London location. The notes were found to be forgeries from a large batch that was then flooding European countries. The notes were traced to a Daniel Green, who'd dumped them after realising he was being followed by police. Curiously, Green was the former husband of "Black Rita" Green, who'd been murdered in her flat on Rupert Street, Soho five years before. That case has never been solved.
