Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. milit.) a subservient person, a menial; thus dog-robbing adj., a term of abuse.

1840		E. Howard Jack Ashore I 297: Come, tramp with your dishclout, you fiddle-faced, dog-robbing, trencher-scraper.
1868		Harper’s Mag. Feb. 300/2: ‘Dog-robber’ was the name by which the soldier designated the cooks and detailed soliders who were the occupants of the second table of an officers’ mess [DA].
c.1880		‘The Alphabet Poem’ [US Army poem] D is for Dog Robber, who never does shirk.
1900		Star and Sentinel (Gettysburg, PA) 4/5: ‘Dog robber’ – a soldier who acts as a lickspittle to his superiors.
1905		R. Beach Pardners (1912) 63: ‘Here! you infernal half-spiled, dog-robbing walloper,’ I says; ‘you don’t know enough to drive puddle ducks to a pond.’.
1910		Cosmopolitan (NY) 50 278: The officers at Fort Riley made a regular practice of keeping ‘dog-robbers’ as their exclusive servants, getting all the work they could out of them.
1917		A.G. Empey Over the Top 150: In the British Army there are also servants [...] In the American Army the common name for them is ‘dog robbers’.
1920		H. Wiley Wildcat 54: Cinnamon, you measly dog-robbeh, how is you?
1926		(con. 1918) J.W. Thomason Fix Bayonets! 203: Hey, yuh dog-robbin’ battalion runner, you.
1928		(con. WW1) B.J. Doty Legion of the Damned 204: [H]e was ordonnance to an officer—what in our army is a ‘striker’ or, more popularly, a ‘dog-robber’.
1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 204: Dog robber – Boarding house keeper, sometimes a flunkey.
1945		(con. WWI) L. Nason ‘Among the Trumpets’ in Mason Fighting American (1945) 468: Who was his dog-robber last year?
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 34: Cpl Kling, who is Holme’s dogrobber.
1962		(con. 1940s) G. Mandel Wax Boom 266: I been over to Squadron and saw Churney, the Colonel’s dog-robber.
1974		(con. 1945) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 292: Each marine hut or tent had its dog robber.

2. the tweed suit customarily worn by off-duty British officers.

1898		W.P. Drury Bearers of Burden (1904) 110: He was an absent-minded, short-sighted, long-haired [...] young giant in spectacles and a dogrobber suit.
1946		G. Hackforth-Jones Sixteen Bells 69: Numerous officers, clad in an assortment of clothing, ranging from tennis clothes to ‘dog-robbers’ came on deck [OED].
1959		Naval Rev. (London) 47 335: My friend led the way, clad in his jodhpurs, on his trusty black stallion, and I followed, wearing ‘dog-robbers’.
1962		W. Granville Sailors’ Sl. 41/1: Dog robbers. Civilian clothes worn by Naval officers when ashore. From the type of check suits worn by men who sell (stolen) dogs at street corners.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 324/1: since ca. 1900.