Bye Bye Safety Deposit Boxes?

 by Sybil Johnson

I read a newspaper article not long ago about how Chase bank is phasing out safety deposit boxes (or safe deposit boxes, if you prefer. We’ll get to that bit in a minute.) Customers who have them can keep them as long as their branch remains open, but no new ones can be rented. If a branch closes, you won’t be able to rent a box at a different branch.

That got me thinking about the history of such boxes and how many movies and TV shows involve them. But first, let’s talk about the “safe” vs. “safety” thing.

I pretty much use the terms interchangeably, sometimes saying “safety deposit boxes”, sometimes saying “safe deposit boxes.” Just like I sometimes pronounce coupon as “koo-pon” and sometimes “cue-pon”. That seems to depend on what part of the U.S. you live in. According to a poll, 72% of the states in the U.S. lean toward “cue-pon”. Washington state, where I grew up, favors this pronunciation. California, where I live now, is a “coo” state. Hence my alternating pronunciations. Here’s an article on that: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111103005635/en/Coupons.com-Releases-Surprising-Results-of-a-Nationwide-Poll-57-Percent-of-Americans-Say-CUE-Pon-Not-COO-Pon 

Let’s get back to the safe vs. safety thing. Apparently, “safety deposit boxes” is the term most often used in the U.S. “Safe deposit boxes” is used in the UK. I don’t have an explanation about why I go back and forth. Perhaps it’s all those British TV shows I watch.

Getting back to the history of them, I found an interesting article online from 2016 that goes through the history from the origins of safekeeping in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through the birth of the modern safe deposit box in the 1800s. In the U.S., independent companies provided the service and, eventually, banks got into the act and got the majority of the business. That seems to be reversing now with banks building smaller branches with no room for boxes and new private companies coming into being. Some of them I googled provide 24-hour access and use iris scans with a pin code for security. For the article on the history, go here: https://www.metrosafe.co.uk/editorials/news-releases/date/2016/03/01/the-history-of-the-safe-deposit-box/ 

Why do we as crime writers care about their apparent demise? Think about how many movies, books and TV shows involve breaking into vaults and robbing boxes or getting access to a box that holds a secret/info a character needs. So many that there are lists of them online. See https://blog.safedepositcenterwa.com/21-hit-movies-that-revolve-around-safety-deposit-boxes/ and https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=safe-deposit

I don’t think these boxes will completely go away. Private companies will continue to take up the slack. Who knows, maybe banks will get back in the business. In any case, I think writers can still create stories that involve the boxes. If they do go away, we can always set a story in a time when they were common.