[4][3]Starting in 1889,[1] Clarkson's company supplied costumes and wigs used in the amateur dramatic productions of Queen Victoria's family and circle.

[6] He provided the wigs for the princesses who were attending the fancy-dress Devonshire House Ball of 1897, and visited Buckingham Palace beforehand to arrange their hair.

[7][5][Note 1] In 1910, Clarkson helped disguise the members of Horace de Vere Cole's Dreadnought hoax (including a young Virginia Woolf) as an Abyssinian royal delegation – this is recorded in Adrian Stephen's 1936 account of the incident.

He attended every West End production's first night and knew many of the leading figures, such as Marie Lloyd, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Dame Nellie Melba and Lillie Langtry.

[5][12] Clarkson also made disguises for detectives from Scotland Yard[3][4] and helped police catch the murderer Herbert John Bennett,[5] who had ordered wigs from him.

In 1933 Harris had received a 14-year prison sentence as the ringleader of a large gang of arsonists, who set fires for the purpose of insurance fraud.

[5] Harris also bribed the attending member of the London Salvage Corps to ignore evidence that valuable goods supposedly destroyed had been removed before the fire started.

[5] The circumstances of his death were considered sufficiently suspicions that an autopsy on his body was performed by the prominent pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, although he found no conclusive evidence of foul play.

[11] Clarkson's funeral was at St Paul's, Covent Garden[Note 3][25][5] and he was buried in a modest grave in the Actors' Acre in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England.

[11][26] The matter was investigated by the police detective Leonard Burt[27] and in March 1938, Hobbs and a former solicitor, Edmond O'Connor[Note 5] went on trial, accused of together forging the earlier will.

These include Sax Rohmer's The Golden Scorpion (1919);[38] The Clockwork Man by Edwin Vincent Odle (1923) – an early science-fiction novel featuring a time-travelling cyborg;[39] Graham Seton Hutchison's Colonel Grant's To-morrow (1931);[40] Black August (1934) by Dennis Wheatley;[41] and Spy (1935) by Bernard Newman.

[42] Examples of Clarkson's wigs are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum,[43][44] including one possibly worn by the dancer Adeline Genée.

[46][47] The Museum of London has a Clarkson horsehair wig that was made specially for the famous clown, Whimsical Walker[Note 7][49] and another that is claimed to have been worn on-stage by Sir Henry Irving.