Posted by Prue Eckett on October 02, 2007 at 20:16:21 from 222.155.131.15 user PrueEckett.
In Reply to: Re: . . about the Beckfoot plumbers - the REAL ISSUE posted by Robert Hill on October 02, 2007 at 17:50:44:
I think it might be because our perception of what is rude has changed. As a 50's born child, toileting of any sort was considered rude in my childhood and washing discussed only of necessity. I can't remember any books that mentioned it until I read Elizabeth Enright's Gone Away Lake series(published first in 1957) where the archaic toilet in the Brace-Gideon house was described in detail. Even then, when the children were playing in the abandoned houses there was no mentioned of sanitary arrangements.
The Harry Potter books take a much more contemporary approach as Robert has noted, but this reflects modern thinking as it should.