"lay pit and box together"

[Joel S. Berson]

A correspondent on another list notes:

>According to Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang, Penguin
>1972, page 699, the expression means to destroy or remove the division
>between anus and vagina. He dates the expression to about 1780, and
>his reference is to Grose's  Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785,
>where it is described as a simile derived from the playhouse. He does
>not explain the purpose of such an operation.

(Same source (although 1785 instead of 1811), and still just a
dictionary -- until I obtain the 1764 usage -- but still believed in 1972.

Joel

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