Norfolk Howard n.
a bedbug.
Observer (London) 1 Aug. 3/4: Whilst eulogising a mattress, to the following effect: ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I can confidentially recommend this first-rate article. Warranted to contain no “bugs” or “norfolk howards”! | ||
, , | Sl. Dict. 189: Norfolk-Howards bugs; a person named Bug having lately adopted the more aristocratic appellation of norfolk howard. | |
Sportsman 22 Sept. 2/1: Notes on News [...] Why does not some ingenious person invent a cheap vermin-destroyer [...] What is Mr Harper Twelvetrees about? Do ‘Norfolk Howards’ only bound his ingenuity? | ||
London Figaro 26 Dec. n.p.: A traveller at a hotel, while registering his name, saw a lively Norfolk Howard making his way briskly across the page. In consternation he declared that he had [...] never before stopped at a place where a Norfolk Howard looked over the hotel register to see where his room was [F&H]. | ||
[ | London Life 24 May 8/2: Mr. Norfolk Howard had no difficulty in becoming a member of the family of all the blood, &c., &c., although he was born a ‘Bug’] . | |
Coventry Herald 25 Nov. 2/8: [He] said there was nothing a cockroach liked so much as a ‘Norfolk Howard’ . | ||
Civil and Military Gazette 30 Sept. n.p.: There were — call them drawing-pins, Norfolk-Howards in that ourdah, and its esprit de corps, horse for the most part, was indescribable and unequalled. | ‘The Longest Way Round’ in||
Society 6 Aug. 757/1: Such writers as this, says the lord of verse, are the lice on the locks of literature. Also I should presume they are the flea down the back of Poetry and the Norfolk Howard in the shirt of Art [F&H]. | ||
Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 183/1: Norfolk Howard (Popular). A bed-bug. Due to a man named Buggey advertising a change of name to this phrase, a combination of the family name and title of the Duke of Norfolk. Produced much press comment and even sympathy for all persons with objectionable names. |