Green’s Dictionary of Slang

any spotted silk handkerchief, as sported by fashionable costermongers.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 136: I only napt a couple of bird’s eye wipes, which I have just fenc’d to the Cove at that there Ken.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 125: Blue bird’s eye wipe—A blue pocket handkerchief with white spots.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford II 107: He was pumped by the mob for the theft of a bird’s-eye wipe.
1842		Comic Almanack Aug. 325: The glance of his eye sweeps the whole range beneath him with a bird’s-eye wipe.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 6: bird’s eye wipe, diamond spots.
1862		Mayhew & Binny Criminal Prisons of London 6: ‘Fogle,’ for a handkerchief, a ‘bird’s eye wipe’ (German vogel, a bird) has been taken [...] from the German vagrants.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 74: bird’s-eye wipe, darkish blue ground, large round white spots, with a spot in the centre of darker blue than the ground.
1873		Sl. Dict.