Brewer's: Tiger

(A) properly means “a gentleman's attendant,” and page a lady's attendant; but the distinction is quite obsolete, and any servant in livery who rides out with his master or mistress is so called; also a boy in buttons attendant on a lady, like a page; a parasite.

“ `yes,' she cried gaily over the banisters, ‘my flacre and my tiger are waiting.’” —A Fellow of Trinity, chap. xv.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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