On 4th July 1944 Kirkwall Sheriff Court heard the case of the destruction of one of the town’s very few public telephone boxes.

Before the majority of people had landlines into their homes, or mobile phones in their pockets, the public telephone box was an essential means of communication.  In 1935 there had been 19,000 public telephones in the UK: by 1940, with the introduction of the K6 design , there were 35,000.

At the Sheriff Court on 4th July 1944, Corporal Anthony Boyack of the Royal Marines pled not guilty to the destruction of a telephone box. The court, however, disagreed, and found him guilty of backing a 30cwt Fordson lorry into the telephone box and knocking it over.

The telephone box was located at the Harbour Street end of Kirkwall pier and most of it landed up in pieces in the sea. The actual registered driver of the lorry was Corporal George Knutting who had left the vehicle at the corner to walk down to the pier. He said he thought he had left the engine switched off. When he returned he discovered that Boyack, who had been in the lorry with him, had backed it into the telephone box.

The keys were still in the lorry and Boyack, in his defence, claimed that the handbrake had slipped. A naval rating, William Lewis, was on sentry duty at the time and witnessed the incident. He said that in his opinion the engine must have still been running. George Stuart, coastguard, also witnessed the accident. He said it took very little to knock over the kiosk, something he could have done himself, but he confirmed that the engine of the lorry was running.

The handbrake was examined by Constable Charles Craigie who found it to be in perfect working order. Boyack had made a statement to the Police soon after the event which he withdrew on the advice of his commanding officer. He then made a second statement. Constable Craigie stated that in the first withdrawn account Boyack admitted that he had been tampering with the gear lever and the lorry set off.

Boyack was fined £1 or 10 days for the main charge. He was admonished for driving without a licence. He paid the fine.

Today very few of these iconic telephone boxes exist but many have been repurposed by local communities as places where people can share books, garden produce, seeds etc. It is easy to forget how important they were in keeping people and families in touch, especially during war time when so many young men and women were far from home.

Fiona Grahame