"husband stitch" ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=husband+stitch&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chu

"husband stitch" ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=husband+stitch&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chusband%20stitch%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Chusband%20stitch%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=husband+stitch... Appears that its use really took off with the story, but was something known and at least sometimes practiced before then.