crapper 1910...and more

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has _crapper_ "lavatory" from 1932, HDAS from 1927.  Both sources are American.

  Yet a clear-cut British ex. from 1910 appears in a _sub rosa_ porno novel:

  1910 "Ramrod" _A Nocturnal Meeting_ [http://www.folklore.ms/html/books-and-MSS/1910s/1910ca-my-lustful-adentures--ramrod/index.htm] : He'd just come from the crapper.

  Note the absence of quotation marks, in contrast to the author's practice of placing them around traditional four-letter words, That may suggest that he found the word unrematkable.

  John Patrick unearthed this publication and placed it on his website.  He's also emailed me some interesting exx. of a previously unreported Anglo-Irish 19th C. sense of "crapper," which seems to have been driven out by the modern meaning (unquestionably influenced by the name of Thomas Crapper).

  crapper, n.  a shot of whisky; (_also_) a shot glass.

  1820 "Myself" [Mrs. Purcell] _The Orientalist; or, Electioneering in Ireland_  [London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy] 264: Coachee...owned that, as the night was severely cold, he had for a moment dismounted to take "a crapper."

  1837 Samuel Lover _Rory O'More: A National Romance_ 206 [London: Richard Bentley]: "Something to dhrink."..."Is it a pot, a pint, or a crapper?"..."I'll just take the cobwebs out o' my throat with a pint first."

  1843  _Fraser's Mag._  XXVII (Apr.) 439: Well then, fill me up a crapper of whiskey, as you say.

  1847  Charles Lever _The Knight of Gwynne: A Tale of the Time of the Union_     [rpt.London: Chapman & Hall, 1858] 183: And if it's thinking of trating me ye are, 'tis a 'crapper' in a pint of porter I'd take.

  For non-literary types, Lover and Lever (pun intended) were two of the most popular Irish writers of the 19th C.

  John comments, "It seems that a 'crapper' was once a small cup -- perhaps a whiskey shot glass.  Can anyone find other references to "crapper" which clarifies or corroborates this meaning?"

  As for the derivation, I'm at a loss. No sense of "crapper/ cropper/ crap/ crop" in OED seems plausible to me.

  JL


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