This was one of two identical costumes worn by the musical clowning act The Brothers Webb, also known as Jojo & Ruté. With white faces, red noses and little black hats, Joseph Webb (1860-1938) or Jojo, and Arthur Webb (1862-1930) or Ruté, toured variety theatres in Britain and Europe from the 1890s until about 1918, clowning, dancing, and playing an assortment of unlikely comical instruments including concertinas, banjos and fairy bells hidden in their baggy costumes. Some costumes are reported to have had rubber-ball activated horns underneath the notes on the costumes so that they could be played comically by pressing them from outside.

Newspaper reviews of their act show that in 1898 they appeared in British towns including Sheffield, Nottingham, Swansea, Hull, Birmingham, Bradford, Plymouth, and in 1899 in Wolverhampton, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Belfast, Manchester, Plymouth, Bristol and Newport. By 1917 they were appearing with Hengler's Circus in Glasgow, selling postcards of themselves for charity: 'to provide parcels of cigarettes and tobacco for the brave men at the front'.

The existence of the identical costume in private hands which probably came from Joseph Webb indicates that this costume was that owned by Arthur or Ruté.