Army and Navy Club

The Army and Navy Club is known to its members by the affectionate nickname of The Rag. This peculiar name originated in the nineteenth century as a deliberate insult from a disgruntled officer named William Higginson Duff. After a disappointing meal, he compared the club to a notorious, squalid gambling den of the era called the Rag and Famish, where down-and-out gamblers played for pennies. The members found the comparison so amusing that they embraced it, eventually shortening the name to The Rag, a title the club still uses with pride today.