Ned Heite wrote:
>
> Apologies for cross-posting.
>
> Americans are uncomfortable when they discuss toilets,...

Okay, Ned, you started it... I suspect, however, you will find you get
answered mainly with anecdotes, like this:

Robin and I used to live in a 19th-c neighborhood of Richmond
(Carver--Jackson Ward) in a house built about 1870. There was a small
concrete pad with appropriate plumbing on the back of the house, in a
corner, indicating that a fluch toilet had once been there. Out of
curiosity, I investigated this feature and (though I don't remember how)
determined it probably had been added to the house in the 1910s or 20s.
The back yard was the richest garden I've ever had, and it was clear
that the very rear of the yard was enriched with neartly a half-century
of night soil deposits.

Next door to us lived a strange old man in his 90s. We became friends of
sorts and used to chat. He was a consummate junk collector. He had many
"odd" habits, but one was his insistence on continuing to use the privy
in his yard rather than the indoor plumbing that had been added to his
house long since. He embarrassedly admitted to disliking having a toilet
inside. This got me to asking questions of older folks and several
recalled that there was great resistence to moving plumbing indoors
around the turn of the century (most remembered their elders talking
about it later). he outside "attached" toilet was apparently a
compromise for those who continued to find the notion of a stinky nasty
toilet in the house way too objectionable.

Now here we are a century later, and I suspect that many of us cannot
fathom filling a thunderjug and leaving under the bed 'til morning...

Now THAT's some powerful cultural taboo!
--
Dan Mouer
http://saturn.vcu.edu/~dmouer/homepage.htm