Hanshew began a career as an actor when only 16 years old, playing minor parts with Ellen Terry's company.
He used, among others, the pen name "Charlotte May Kingsley," and wrote more than 150 novels, some of which were co-authored with his wife, Mary E. Hanshew.
Hanshew's best-known character was the consulting detective "Hamilton Cleek" (the assumed name of the King of Maurevania),[2] a reformed thief now working for law enforcement.
The main character of dozens of short stories that began to be published during 1910 and were subsequently collected in a series of books, Cleek is based in Clarges Street, London, where he is consulted continually by Inspector Narkom of Scotland Yard.
(this list is incomplete) Ben F. Wilson appeared as Detective Hamilton Cleek in a series of silent film shorts:[4] Even by the standards of the adventure fiction of the era, Hamilton Cleek is a notably unrealistic character, not only for his ability to impersonate anyone (including speaking multiple foreign languages perfectly) but for his physical derring-do and his frequent melodramatic encounters with Margot, "Queen of the Apaches", and her partner-in-crime Merode.