Although white make-up was used by clowns as early as Grimaldi in the early 1800s, the duo of elegant white-face clown and hobo-style Auguste was a late 19th century development in circus, introduced after Tom Belling Senior (1843-1900) played the lower-class style clown at the Circus Renz in Vienna in the 1870s. This specifically dressed duo is obsolete today but was an essential element of 20th century circus. The more outrageous and stupid the red-nosed Auguste could look in his baggy clothes and oversized shoes the better, in contrast to his sparring partner the elegantly-dressed white-face clown.

Jackie Sloan (1914-1984) worked with Chipperfields Circus and Bertram Mills Circus from the early 1950s to the 1960s when he retired due to ill health. Like all white-face clowns he played the elegant and intelligent part of the duo in contract to the rumbunctious and baggily dressed clown, as typified in the 1950s by Coco the clown (Nicolai Poliakoff, 1900-1974), with whom he worked.