Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a silk handkerchief with a green base and a yellow pattern; thus kingsman of the rortiest, a very gaudy variety.

1833		‘Knowing Bill’ in Rake’s Budget in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 87: I comes it so flash [...] vith my lily Benjamin, vite castor, yellow hingyman [sic] and Newgate drops.
1839		W.A. Miles Poverty, Mendicity and Crime; Report 115: The new term for handkerchiefs is a Billy, for which pickpockets have peculiar terms known only in the trade [...] green king’s man, green ground, with pattern, 5s.
1847		G.W.M. Reynolds Mysteries of London III 85/1: A Stranger—looked like a spunk fencer. Green king’s-man, water‘s-man, yellow fancy and yellow-man .
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 6: Green King’s man, any pattern on a green ground.
1861		H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor IV 319/1: I took out a green ‘kingsman’ (handkerchief) next in value to a black silk handkerchief.
1874		J. Greenwood Wilds of London (1881) 121: Young bucks of dustmen, apeing heavy swelldom in their bulky flannel jackets, and their brilliant and bunchy ‘kingsman’ (silk neckerchief) encircling their throats and fastened in a holiday bow.
1902		A. Morrison Hole in the Wall (1947) 67: With bright handkerchiefs over their shoulder – belcher yellows and kingsmen and blue billies.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 163/1: Kingsman of the rortiest (Sporting, early 19 cent.). Square, folded necktie of high colours.

2. (also kinsman) a silk handkerchief in a variety of colours, as worn by costermongers of both sexes.

1855		W. Phillips Wild Tribes of London 115: Swaggering fellows, clad in weather-stained velveteens [...] and showy ‘kingsmen’ twined round their brawny necks.
1858		A. Mayhew Paved with Gold 70: You knows, Buck, as well as I do, that we leads the life of dogs. Arn’t we all on us spotted (marked) here? and ain’t the Bobbies at our heels directly we stirs a foot, so that we can’t even do a kingsman (silk handkerchief) in a day, let alone a skin or a soup (a purse or watch)?
1861		Melbourne Punch ‘City Police Court’ 3 Oct. 234/1: Prisoner.You see she was on the mooch, and happening to nim a prop from a swell’s fancy kingsman, a cakey-pannum-fencer, as ought to know better, peached on her.
1866		J. Greenwood Little Ragamuffin 48: It was the correct thing for the costermonger [...] to wear round his throat – bunchy, loosely tied and elegantly careless – a very large, highly-coloured, silk pocket-handkerchief. This the costermonger calls a ‘kingsman.’.
1874		J. Greenwood Wilds of London (1881) 292: Flash Jack, with his great throat encircled by a bird’s-eye ‘Kingsman’ of irresistable pattern.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 91: The old gal done very well going out in the dachers with her kipsey, herself nice and clean, with a clean apron on and a kinsman across her shoulders.