Daniel was the eldest of four children and inherited the family estate, eighty acres of rich meadow land and an adjoining farm, when his father died in 1736.

[1] Hitherto Dancer had given no manifestation of his miserly instincts, but now, in company with his only sister, who shared his tastes and lived with him as his housekeeper, he commenced a life of the utmost seclusion and most rigid parsimony.

He took only one meal a day, consisting invariably of a little baked meat and a hard-boiled dumpling, a sufficient quantity of which to last the week was prepared every Saturday night.

[6] A later account based on these was contained in Frederick Somner Merryweather's Lives and anecdotes of misers (1850),[7][8] a work made memorable by its appearance in an amusing chapter of Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend.

"The house, or rather the heap of ruins, in which Mr Dancer lived, and which at his death devolved to the right of Captain Holmes, was a most miserable, decayed building, for it had not been repaired for more than half a century.