There’s a very good chance if you take the toaster into the bathroom and plug it in with the intent to murder the bather, as postulated in the O.P.
Back in college I had a physics lab class where we explored this, though in a slightly different configuration. We took a glass baking dish, maybe 15"x10" and a couple of inches deep, and put maybe a 1/4" of water in the bottom. In the water at each end of the pan we placed the tip of a bare wire, and then applied a voltage across the two wires. This caused electrical current to flow from one wire tip through the water to the other wire tip. With a volt meter we then measured the voltage at a grid of points throughout the pan of water. These measurements enabled us to plot lines (contours) of constant voltage - and since current flows straight “downhill,” i.e. perpendicular to the lines/contours of constant voltage, we were able to deduce the “streamlines” of electrical current through the water. The current flow looked something like this.
A point-source and a point-sink configuration like that is a pretty fair model of what you get when you drop an electrical appliance into a bathtub: the appliance is the source, and the metal drain pipe is the sink. If the tub water is very deep (relative to the length/width of the tub), you’ll have the 3-dimensional analog of the 2-dimensional situation I described earlier. Where the lines are closer together on that sketch I linked to, the current density is stronger - which means that the voltage gradient is stronger. If your body is bridging across two points of greatly differing voltage - e.g., if you’re positioned between the toaster and the drain - you’ll get more current flowing through your body.
True for new construction, but older houses don’t automatically get retrofitted to meet new codes.
ISTR a case where a man attempted to murder his wife by tossing a plugged-in hair dryer into the bathtub with her, but he was thwarted by the GFCI. Ah, here it is.
I don’t think most electric cords on toasters are long enough, nor are electrical outlets usually close enough to a bath tub for there to be a “very good” chance of it.
Leo is thinking of the Pre-credits from the same movie.
Based on my extensive experience (mostly through watching “Forensic Files”), electrical appliances falling into a bathtub are an unreliable murder method.
There was an episode where a man prepared a bath for his wife, brought a portable TV in and set it up on the edge of the tub, then “accidentally” knocked it in. She apparently was unharmed, though as I recall he employed an alternate, successful method later.
I tried to find a reference to the specific case, but instead came up with an intriguing and as yet unexplained quote from another episode: “And inside the bathroom, investigators found a possible explanation for why the hamburger buns were there.” :eek:
I never understood this about the UK. Surely it would be safer to allow GFCI protected outlets in the bath than to tempt everyone to run an extension cord from a (presumably non-GFCI) outlet outside of the bath. Drove my wife crazy that she had to dry her hair in another room while we were traveling there.
Plus where does one plug in the charger for one’s electric toothbrush? Oh wait, never mind :D.
nm
Actually, orange outlets are used (in the US, at least) to indicated isolated ground circuits. These are not confined to hospitals - a few electronics labs I have worked in have had them. They are not isolated for safety, but usually to eliminate ground noise in sensitive instruments or to “float” instruments so that chassis ground can be at some higher voltage (although this practice can be dangerous). I believe they are also used in recording studios to break ground loops.
Two words: extension cord. Don’t fight the hypothetical. If someone’s determined enough to murder a person in a bathtub, they’ll find a way to do the deed.
All these things depend on when the bathroom was built & when we’re talking about.
A pure 1960s scenario has a bathroom with outlets near the tub, no GFCI, and toasters factory equipped with 8 foot cords because kitchens only had 1 or two outlets total and often in inconvenient spots.
A pure 2015 scenario has a bathroom with outlets many feet from the tub, GFCI protection for all, and toasters with 24 inch cords.
Today there are still lots of non-updated 1960s bathrooms. There are relatively few surviving 1960s toasters.
In line with this, I don’t quite understand the obsession with toasters. If we’re looking for an electrical appliance with exposed heating elements, a space heater will do, and so will a hair dryer, both of which have cords a good bit longer than most toasters. And frankly, you don’t even need exposed heating elements: as long as your candidate appliance has some vents on its case, water can penetrate and find an uninsulated terminal on the hot side of the on/off switch. A clock radio, a Hitachi Magic Wand, your computer - heck, even just the power cord from your computer - can electrify a bathtub quite nicely.
Okay this freaks me out a little because at one time I lived in a tiny, old house with a small kitchen. The kitchen had a ceiling-mounted light that you turned on an off by pulling on a little chain. One day I noticed that if you held the chain and then grabbed the metal fridge door handle (easy to do in that kitchen) you’d get a tingling feeling down your arm sort of like when a limb goes to sleep except it felt kind of like it was vibrating, like there was an inaudible buzz.
I used to demonstrate it to visitors as a curiosity. Now I’m thinking I could have killed myself or a visitor doing that. 
Very few houses in the UK will not be fully protected with what we call an RCD on every circuit. Fuses were phased out in the middle of the last century and a house not wired to current regulations could not be sold.
Before I fitted LEDs; when the halogen lights in my sitting room blew, the RCD would trip, necessitating a trip to the garage where the distributor board lives.
One plugs one’s toothbrush into the shaver socket. One also has a beard.
Is an “RCD” what we would call a “circuit breaker”?
Yes, you could have. The current path was from one arm to the other, which means through your chest, and there was enough current for you to feel, which means there was more than enough to potentially throw your heart into fibrillation.
On this side of the pond, only “wet” locations (bathrooms, near kitchen sinks, etc) are required to have a GFCI (what you folks call an RCD). While they do make GFCI breakers, it is much more common for the GFCI to be integrated into the outlet (receptacle) itself. If the GFCI trips, you just push a button on the outlet to reset it.
GFCIs have been required in the U.S. since about the mid 1970s.
In the last 15 years or so, the U.S. has also required Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters (AFCIs) in bedrooms. These are designed to trip when they detect an arc, like from a frayed extension cord.
We don’t require folks to go back and replace old stuff, so older homes here may still have fuses, aluminum wire, no safety ground, and may even have knob and tube wiring (which just gives me the heebie jeebies) if they are old enough. Some insurance companies may refuse to cover you if you have some of these older things in place, or they may charge you a much higher premium. Even though it’s not required, a lot of folks have replaced fuse boxes with breakers just to make their homes easier to sell.
RCD is a “Residual Current Device”. In the U.S. it is called a GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) or GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter).
Breaker = high trip current, designed to stop wires from melting and prevent fires. Provides little protection for people.
GFCI = trips due to a ground fault, designed to protect people from getting shocked
AFCI = trips due to arc, designed to stop bedroom fires from frayed extension cords
An AFCI or a GFCI may be built into a breaker, but a breaker does not necessarily contain an AFCI or a GFCI.
In a Columbo episode the bad guy used a mixer. Quite efficient.
When I was a kid some 45 years ago, I noticed the same thing when I touched the stainless steel kitchen sink and the fridge handle at the same time.
I think you were whooshed. Something to do with English citizens being averse to dental hygiene. 
A little story: I once set out to put up a new shelf above the sink in our downstairs bathroom. This required a couple of new holes, so I plugged the drill into the bathroom outlet and went at it. When the drill suddenly shut off and would not restart, I was baffled, until I realized that I apparently had drilled right through the electrical line leading to the outlet.
The electrician was very amused (and made good money off my mistake).