Frances Moffat, Dancing on the Brink of the World (1977), referring to 1920s:

"Then, late at night, the members shared a final round of drinks and returned to their tents. Off in the woods, someone could be heard, singing at the top of his lungs, 'Dan, Dan, the lavatory man, who spends all day in the old crapping can.'"


G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968):

"The... attendant in the public toilet [is] celebrated sardonically in the song, “Dan! Dan! the Lavatory Man":

   He picks up the papers and he cleans up the towels,
   And listens to the music of the constipated bowels!

(N.Y. 1940, often with variant: 'the moving bowels.')"

Michael S. Saag, Positive (2014):

'I asked Dad to sing the old songs, including the outrageous, lewd ones that we had sung around Papaharry’s [sic] piano: 'Dan Dan the Lavatory Man,' 'Uncle Bud,' 'Grandma’s in the Cellar.'”


A song that revels in thinking about excrement while smugly ridiculing the holder of the lowest job in a fancy restaurant, one step above the sewer. Singing graphically about the lavatory befouls the mental image of the restaurant as well - and its food. A gross-out popular (in some circles) for a century and across the English-speaking world.