fogle

Unclear. German Vogel (“bird”) has been suggested, the connection being bird's-eye, a fabric from which such handkerchiefs were made.[1] Hotten (see References) suggests a connection with the Italian slang foglia (“pocket, purse”) or French argot fouille (“pocket”).

fogle (plural fogles)

1. (obsolete) A pocket handkerchief.
   • 1830, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford, 2009, Gutenberg eBook #7735,

     One, gentlemen, I myself expelled from our corps for ungentlemanlike practices; he picked pockets of fogles, (handkerchiefs)--it was a vulgar employment.

   • 1853, Lord William Lennox, “Ernest Atherley, Or Scenes at Home and Abroad”, in The Sporting Review, Volume 30, page 202:

     […] and we've to pick up the stakes and cords at Uncle Ben's, to get the bird's-eye fogles in St. Martin's-lane, […] .

   • c. 1867, Anthony Trollope, The Claverings‎:

     Doodles, therefore, wore a cut-away coat, a colored shirt with a fogle round his neck, old brown trousers that fitted very tightly round his legs, and was careful to take no gloves with him.

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary

• Egolf, Fogel