Norfolk Howard, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Norfolk Howard n.

also n.h.

[in cruel memoriam of one Joseph (or Joshua) Bug who, in 1862, changed his name to Norfolk Howard, despite popular derision at what was seen as affectation. The Times came to his aid, publishing a list of other risible/unpleasant names. Among them were ‘Asse, Beaste, Belly, Boots, Cripple, Cheese, Clodd, Dunce, Fatt, Frogge, Hagg, Humpe, Jelly, Kneebone, Lazy, Mudd, Honeybum, Piddle, Paswater, Pisse, Pricksmall, Quicklove, Rottengoose, Swette, Sheartlifte, Silly, Spittle, Teate and Vittels’]

a bedbug.

1862		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”!
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 189: Norfolk-Howards bugs; a person named Bug having lately adopted the more aristocratic appellation of norfolk howard.
1866		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?
1871		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].
[1879		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’] .
1881		Coventry Herald 25 Nov. 2/8: [He] said there was nothing a cockroach liked so much as a ‘Norfolk Howard’ .
1887		Kipling ‘The Longest Way Round’ in 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.
1892		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].
1909		J. Ware 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.