thunder box

See also: thunderbox and thunder-box

English

Noun

thunder box (plural thunder boxes)

1. Alternative form of thunderbox
   • 1806 September, Argus [pseudonym], “Provincial Drama, &c.”, in The Monthly Mirror: Reflecting Men and Manners. […], volume XXII, London: […] J. Wright, […] [a]nd published by Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, […], →OCLC, pages 205–206:

     [T]wo articles, both indispensibly necessary to a theatre, are not blundered, viz. a property room, and thunder box!—no they are omitted altogether!!

   • 1833 May, O’Keeffe, “The Late Mr. O’Keeffe”, in Edward Bulwer-Lytton, editor, The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume XXXVIII, 2nd part, number CXLIX, London: [F]or Henry Colburn by Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 37:

     [H]e [the English actor West Digges] said, "Take the child to the slips;" and I was led through the carpenter's gallery, the cloudings and thunder boxes, and placed in a good seat, where I saw the play with great delight.

   • 1892 January, “Ingenious Stage Machinery”, in The Theatre: A Record of the Stage, Drama, Music, Art, Literature, volume VIII, number 1 (number 179 overall), New York, N.Y.: The Theatre Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 32, column 1:

     The pouring and pattering of rain and the beating of hail require four different contrivances. The most novel of these is a wooden box, about twelve feet long and six inches square, inside of which are numerous slanting sheets of tin, punctured with small holes. A number of peas are rushed continuously up and down the box, rolling over the punctured tin and tumbling from one sheet to the other in a manner like that described of the iron balls in the "thunder box."

   • 1987, Alfred Draper, chapter 2, in Dawns Like Thunder: The Retreat from Burma 1942, London: Leo Cooper, →ISBN, page 22:

     Then there were the million-odd Indians, coolies, gardeners, house servants, ayahs, syces and others who performed the tasks that no one else would tackle; they emptied the "thunder boxes", collected the refuse and were the main source of labour in the docks.

   • 1991 April 20, Carl Mutt, “The dilemma of ‘thunder boxes’”, in The Mirror, Accra, Ghana: Graphic Corp., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 5, columns 1–2:

     I am afraid his history on the advent of pan latrines or what is better known to 'thoroughbred colonials' as "Thunder Boxes" was rather wanting; and I don't blame him. […] [W]ell after the end of the Second World War some boarding schools in Cape Coast were still using "thunder boxes".

   • 1998, Raphael Samuel, “The Lost Gardens of Heligan”, in Alison Light, with Sally Alexander and Gareth Stedman Jones, editors, Island Stories: Unravelling Britain: Theatres of Memory, Volume II, paperback edition, London, New York, N.Y.: Verso, published 1999, →ISBN, part II (English Journeys), page 128:

     A more macabre exercise in historical reconstruction follows the fate of those who, on the eve of the Great War, scrawled their names on the plaster of the ‘thunder box’—the toilet next to the dark house.

   • 2004, Peter Moss, “Far Titanic City and a Near Fatal Thunder Box”, in Bye-bye Blackbird: An Anglo-Indian Memoir, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 50:

     [O]ur nocturnal visitors would, with much clattering and banging, collect and dispose of the contents of our commodes, or thunder boxes, doubtless to be used as fertiliser for distant vegetable gardens. We had about half a dozen thunder boxes ranged down one side of the bathroom, […]. The practice was to leave unused thunder boxes with their seats and lids up, to indicate which were available, and then close them after use.