The simile "As rich as Damer" has been used for over two hundred years in Ireland, and derives its origin from the richest, meanest, and most unscrupulous Shylock banker that modern times have produced. Joseph Damer was a noted banker, "money scrivener", and usurer in Dublin as early as the middle of Charles the Second's reign. His place of business was at the "London Tavern", a well-known resort in those days, which was situated at the end of a lane that ran between Nos. 4 and 5 Fishamble street. Damer, conspicuous as a miser as well as a banker, was of mean, not to say beggarly appearance; he dressed shabbily and lived poorly. He lent large sums to the nobility and gentry, and even the Irish Government was his debtor. As Swift says in the mock Elegy which he wrote on Damer:-
"Where e'er he went, he never saw his betters;
Lords, knights and squires were all his humble debtors."
He never married, and was over ninety years when he died on July 6th, 1720, reputed to be worth £400,000, an immense sum in those days.
The Irish Times, April 26th, 1930.