Guns have always been disguised as walking-sticks. This is hardly surprising, given that both of them have long thin bits. The development of reliable percussion caps at the beginning of the 19th century made firearms much easier to conceal than wheel or flintlocks, whose ignition mechanisms tended to be more obtrusive. That said, Henry William Vander Kleft was granted a British patent, in 1818, for a “method of constructing a walking-staff, to contain pistol, powder, ball, and screw telescope, pen, ink, paper, pencil, knife, and drawing utensils”. The drawing shows a flintlock.
A mere five years later, John Day of Barnstaple was granted a patent for a percussion cap walking-stick gun. It had a partially external hammer but was not immediately discernible as anything other than a walking-stick.
Dumonthier action…
