disameliorative effect of euphemisms

[James A. Landau]

More accurate information about Thomas Crapper, from URL
     http://www.snopes2.com/business/names/crapper.htm

<quote>
Claim:   The flush toilet was invented by Thomas Crapper
Status:   False.

Origins:   Thomas Crapper is an elusive figure: Most people familiar with his
name know him as a celebrated figure in Victorian England, an ingenious
plumber who invented the modern flush toilet; others believe him to be
nothing more than a hoax, the whimsical creation of a satirical writer. The
truth lies somewhere inbetween.

Much of the confusion stems from a 1969 book by Wallace Reyburn, Flushed with
Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper. Reyburn's "biography" of Crapper has
often been dismissed  as a complete fabrication, as some of his other works
-- most notably Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the
Development of the Bra -- are obvious satirical fiction. Although Flushed
with Pride is, like Bust-Up, a tongue-in-cheek work full of puns, jokes, and
exaggerations, Reyburn did not invent the person of Thomas Crapper as he did
Otto Titzling. In Flushed with Pride, Reyburn's satire rests on the framework
of a real man's life. Thomas Crapper was not, as Reyburn wrote, the inventor
of the flush toilet, a master plumber by appointment to the royals who was
knighted by Queen Victoria, or an important figure whose achievements were
written up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and one searches in vain for
evidence that contemporary authorities took any notice of Thomas Crapper, for
mention of him in biographical dictionaries, or for his obituary notice in
the London Times. But although Thomas Crapper may not have been a man of
importance to his contemporaries, he was indeed a real person, a sanitary
engineer in 19th century London who ran his own plumbing concern, who took
out several patents on plumbing-related devices, and whose name can still be
spotted on manhole covers around London.

Although Thomas Crapper took out nine plumbing patents between 1881 and 1896,
none of these patents was for the "valveless water-waste preventer" he is
often credited with having invented. The first patent for a siphonic flush
was taken out by Joseph Adamson in 1853, eight years before Crapper started
his plumbing business. Many types of siphonic systems were patented in the
1880s, but none by a Crapper until George Crapper, Thomas' nephew, was
awarded an 1897 patent for "improvements in or relating to automatic syphon
flushing tanks." Crapper may have sold or installed water closets, but he
didn't have much to do with their development. Alexander Cummings is
generally credited with inventing the first flush mechanism in 1775 (more
than 50 years before Crapper was born), and plumbers Joseph Bramah and Thomas
Twyford further developed the technology with improvements such as the
float-and-valve system. Thomas Crapper, said an article in Plumbing and
Mechanical Magazine, "should best be remembered as a merchant of plumbing
products, a terrific salesman and advertising genius."

A related legend has it that U.S. soldiers stationed in England during World
War I (some of whom had little or no experience with indoor plumbing) saw
toilets marked with the name 'CRAPPER' and brought the word home as a synonym
for 'toilet' or 'bathroom.' Although the word 'crap' (used in a scatalogical
sense) antedates Thomas Crapper and is therefore not derived from his name,
the origins of 'crapper' as a synonym for 'toilet' are unknown, other than
that it is a particularly American term whose earliest print citings come
from the 1930s.
</quote>

Also a correction to my last posting: the name of the company is
"T. Crapper and Co.", not "Thomas Crapper and Sons".