Son: Father, what is an escutcheon?
Father: Why?
Son: This story says there was a blot on his escutcheon.
Father: Hmmm... Oh yes, an escutcheon is a light colored vest. He was probably carrying a fountain pen.

-Reno Evening Gazette October 27, 1914

Explanation for those who do not get the joke:
Actually an "escutcheon" is the area on a medival shield where one's colors or hearldy markings are displayed. A spot on one's escutcheon was a popular metaphore in the early 1900's to mean some shameful event that detracts from someone's reputation. The famous English Author, Charles Dickens used this metaphore often in his writings and people in the early 1900's were much more familiar with this idiom than people today.

From Chapter 7 of A Tale of Two Cities:

Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.