[Jim McDougall]

Thanks Keith! My guess is that due to the ever heightening legal mandates toward weapons, and the 'concealed' syndrome, there are efforts to unload these items out of stock fearing confiscation.

It does seem intriguing to note the numbers of these accessory/weapons that clearly were in circulation. One goal here was to learn more on the history and actual use of the sword cane/stick, and try to recognize how much 'lore' surrounds them.

The study and formal training of sword fighting techniques and formal fencing became well established in the 18th century, but by the last quarter of the 19th had become well rounded martial arts training. These included boxing, often fencing as well as 'cane fighting'. With similarities to fencing in some respects, it was basically use of the cudgel it seems, and was seen as 'gentlemanly' as it did not typically focus on deadly results.

The use of a concealed blade inside a fashionable accessory with specific purpose of the deadly thrust was seen by many as distinctly 'un-gentlemanly'.

With the sword cane, its use as a swashbuckling trope in the image of the formidable gentleman, or dandy, seems to have found its place in literature or sensational narratives as in some of the accounts of Lord Byron as previously mentioned.

While the sword cane was never mentioned in any of the Zorro literature or early films, it was brought in with the Antonio Banderas film "The Mark of Zorro" and was used effectively as a trope heightening his disguise as a noble dandy.

Apparently in the corpus of Holmes literature and films, though Holmes is suggested to be a skilled swordsman, Conan Doyle does not have him using the sword cane (much to my dismay in my misremembering).

However in "Adventure of the Empty House" (1903), as Holmes recounts his victory over Professor Moriarity at Reichenbach Falls, by crediting his knowledge of 'Baritsu', a study in martial arts of the times. It seems this suggested to later writers that he had used a sword cane.

Actually 'Baritsu' (misspelled) was BARTITSU, from Edwin William Barton- Wright, an English engineer who had developed a combined martial arts regimen including boxing, ju-jitsu, French kick boxing (savate) and CANE FIGHTING in 1898-1902. He had lived in Japan several years and named his method BART-ITSU combining his name and jitsu from the Japanese art.

The walking stick without the concealed sword element became a common trope for the elegant gentleman, and a personalized form of art often in these important accessories of status and wealth.

In an old movie favorite "The Wolf Man" (Lon Chaney Jr. 1941) the lead character is Larry Talbot (Talbot is a term for a breed of hunting dog) and is taken with a walking stick he finds in a local antique shop.
Its handle, the head of a wolf. (OK guys, here I go again with the wolves!).