Green’s Dictionary of Slang

connaught rangers n.

[the Connaught Rangers (disbanded 1922) were also the 88th Regiment of Foot; their army nickname was The Devil’s Own]

(bingo) the number eight.

Show quotations
[UK]Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 249/1: Connaught Rangers. 88 in the game of housey-housey (later tombola, then bingo) [...] I last heard it thus called in the late 1950s.