GeoAmey Secure Prisoner transportation and custody services, outside Manchester Crown Court, Minshull Street, England, UK, M1 3ED

Black Maria These vehicles were usually painted black or a very dark blue. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States, a police wagon was also sometimes called a Black Maria (/məˈraɪə/ mə-RY-ə). The origin of this term is equally uncertain. The name Black Maria is common for race horses beginning with an 1832 appearance in Niles Weekly Register (Oct. 10) and then again in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine and Humorist (1841). The OED lists the first usage as the Boston Evening Traveller from 1847 which mentions them as a new type of wagon. An example from Philadelphia was published in 1852. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests the name came from Maria Lee, a large and fearsome black keeper of a sailors' boarding house whom the police would call on for help with difficult prisoners. The French detective novel Monsieur Lecoq, published in 1868 by Émile Gaboriau, uses the term Black Maria when referring to a police van. In his 1949 song "Saturday Night Fish Fry", Louis Jordan mentions a Black Maria. The term is still used today in parts of Britain for the vehicle that transports prisoners from gaol to court, appearing in the songs "Guns of Brixton" by The Clash, "Singing for the Lonely" by Robbie Williams, "The Curse of Millhaven" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and "Adios Hermanos" by Paul Simon. Frequently, blackened-windowed buses are also used for the same purpose.[8] In the 1950s, many police forces in the United Kingdom, including the Metropolitan Police, used half-ton Morris Commercial vans, painted black, as "Black Marias".[citation needed] The term also exists in Norwegian, where the same vehicle is called maja or svartemaja (alt. -marje, -marja), originating from "Black Maria", in Icelandic as Svarta María and in Finnish as mustamaija. In Serbian, Croatian and Slovene, it is marica (with a small "m"), while Marica with a capital "M" is a diminutive of several female names.