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I seem to recall that Scruit was a trade name - a branded product.
Yes it was, and now I'm stumped as to the name of the manufacturer. They were in Acton, IIRC. I have some original Boxes of Scruit 'Midget' and 'Normal' sizes from the 1930s, illustrated with their 'mascot' - a stick man made of pieces of wire with a Scruit for a head.
The main difference between a typical modern US wirenut and a Scruit or similar (and there were others, including European brands) is that the Scruit was just porcelain, but the wirenut has a sharp-edged spring wire spiral inside to cut a thread on the outside of the copper to secure it and provide additional connection points. Or possibly to create lots of tiny heating elements as was discovered when people tried using them on aluminum cable that didn't make proper contact core to core due to the oxide coating.
The thing about venting - we did and still do vent branch wastes over a certain length, but we have always tried to minimise branch length and avoid sharing them between fittings. In the US they often use smaller diameter stacks and permit longer branches, under which conditions venting becomes more important to avoid unsealing traps.