A reference to an anecdote (joke?) told by Ian Burgess of the Medical Entomology Centre, in a review of pest control workshops in the UK in April 1990:

Referring to bed bugs he said that they were far more common than people were aware. Certainly in urban environments there are a large number of infestations, many of which go undetected for a long time, simply because people do not know what they are. He recalled the story of an Environmental Health Officer who gave a radio interview during which he said how low the number of reported cases of bed bugs were in his district. He then described what they looked like. He and the radio station were subsequently bombarded with reports of the bugs and the following year a very embarrassed EHO had to report a 10-fold increase in infestations.

Source: (1990, September/October) Allergies Emphasised at Pest Control ’90. International Pest Control, 32(5), 116-19 — accession number: 151233 at the AFPMB library.

I’m not sure but I think Dr. Burgess was the first to cite “car boot” sales as a possible source, very early in the game¹, in a BBC News article in 1998, for example, and New Scientist in 2002, where he noted the increase in local council reports:

In the UK, the number of cases reported to local councils has more than quadrupled each year for the past five years, says Ian Burgess, director of Insect Research & Development LTD in Cambridge.

Of course, the old default explanation we’ve come to know was not far behind:

The reason for bedbugs’ return is thought to be the massive increase in travel and tourism to countries where the bugs still lurk. “We found that reports started going up at the end of the cold war at the beginning of the 1990s,” says Burgess.

Funny he didn’t tell his EHO story again.

1. Allow me to recommend one of the earliest ‘resurgence’ articles in the UK—it’s almost innocent. [↩]

These pages may be of related interest:

1. Strange indicators: bed bug infested electronics in 1968 Finland
2. Monday reading: the sad history of bed bug committees
3. The prescience (and great bed bug photographs) of Dr. Tim Myles
4. More incidence clues: bed bugs in Denmark (plus Busvine reflecting on bed bugs in 1984)
5. You have been on a Dundee tram, I perceive