Judson Coker was the master-mind behind the Fifth Avenue Silks, who used to assemble on Sunday mornings and parade up Fifth Avenue in silk pyjamas, silk socks, silk hats, and silk umbrellas in case it rained. He is also a fictional character in P. G. Wodehouse's novel Bill the Conqueror (1924).
In chapter II.2 he boasts to Roberts the butler of his other accomplishments:
"I've done a good deal of that sort of thing. I went up in an aeroplane once, scattering dollar-bills over the city. I'm surprised you've not heard of me."
"We live very much out of the great world down here, sir."
"I suppose you do," said Judson, cheered by this solution. "Yes, I guess that must be it. Quite likely you might not have heard of me if that's so. But you can take it from me that I've done a lot of things in my time. Clever things, you know, that made people talk. If it hadn't been for me I don't suppose the custom of wearing the handkerchief up the sleeve would ever have been known in America."
The origin of this last detail of fashion in the 20s is curious and not too well documented, but it can be reconstructed from a string of quotations across the decades, starting in the middle of the Victorian era.
The custom started as a necessity for soldiers, since the traditional red coats of the British army had no pockets:
Sir Robert Carden: Do you usually carry your pocket handkerchief up your sleeve?—The prosecutor: That is where soldiers generally carry their handkerchiefs when they have them, as they have no pockets for them.
(York Herald, September 8, 1877)
"Though, by the 20th century, the red coat was abandoned for practical duties in favour of khaki by all British Empire military units, it continues to be used for ceremonial full dress and mess dress uniforms" (Wikipedia); and so at the turn of the century we read that:
Although the familiar red coats of soldiers have been shown to be unfit for active service, and are consequently suitable for home wear only, they are still being issued with the side pockets stitched up, and their wearers are forbidden to open and use them under certain pains and penalties. A soldier usually carries his pocket handkerchief up his sleeve, and other pockets less conveniently placed than side pockets of his coat have to be used for his pipe and other necessities.
(Derby Daily Telegraph, July 9 1900)
Thus the habit became a mark of military deportment and distinction of the soldier at home. From them it was soon adoped by young men about town who wished to give themselves military airs:
[The members of the Bachelors' Club] are all immaculate in dress; speak slowly, so that no tittle of their conversation shall pass away; and every one of them wears his handkerchief up his sleeve and his heart on it.
(The Sketch, November 27, 1901)
It is with some a distinguishing mark of a well-educated lady, just as with the same class a man is a true gentleman if he keeps his handkerchief up his sleeve.
(Highland News, April 14, 1906)
Billy thinks he's fit to run the whole Army now [...] and now he always walks with a Guardsman swagger, and wears his handkerchief up his sleeve and salutes instead of taking his hat off, and that sort of thing.
(Truth, December 4, 1907)
The average young-man-about-town—an individual, that is to say, whom you recognise at a glance to be 'a gentleman because he wears his handkerchief up his sleeve'
(Pall Mall Gazette, August 23, 1912)
When exported to America (by Judson Coker, as we have seen), the fashion became the sign of the foreign nobleman:
A gentleman who had all the earmarks of a foreign nobleman about him, including the whiskers and the handkerchief up the sleeve [...]
(Lima News (Ohio), September 19, 1913)
Come the Great War, the situation was reversed, because the knut was now forced to become a real soldier, with the added advantage that he had already mastered the soldierly manner:
If the fellow who is used to wearing goloshes, and underwear of that description, or carrying his handkerchief up his sleeve, or a monicle in his eye, is just as ready to don the uniform of a private, it only goes to show that the Johnnie or Knut, just as you are pleased to call him, is not such a useless and unpatriotic person as you might be inclined to suppose.
(Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 6, 1915)
Finally, in the 20s the origin of the fashion was still remembered mockingly:
'Don't wear the handkerchief up the sleeve,' says our mentor; 'we are no longer at war.'
(Daily Herald, November 10, 1926)
Which takes us neatly to Judson's time. How the fashion evolved after that and at what point it was abandoned (if ever) I cannot say.
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