Born at Hampstead on 21 July 1857, the elder son of Henry Clarke, JP who was in business in the City. He was educated at University College School, then in Gower Street, and he afterwards studied in Germany. He went to St Bartholomew's Hospital with an exhibition in science in 1876, and entered Downing College, Cambridge with an exhibition in 1879. He acted for a short time as assistant demonstrator of anatomy in the Cambridge medical school but did not graduate in the university. He was, however, elected an honorary Fellow of Downing College in 1927. He took the degree of MB at the University of London in 1881 and proceded MD in 1885. He then practised at Blackheath until 1894 when, having come into a little money, he took the FRCS and specialized in ophthal¬mic surgery. He was elected surgeon to the Central London Ophthalmic Hospital in Gray's Inn Road and ophthalmic surgeon to the Miller Hospital, Greenwich. He soon acquired a large and influential practice, and for professional services to several members of the Royal family he was created CVO. He was a vice-president of the Ophthalmological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He married in 1883 Kate Litton, daughter of John Hirst Taylor of Windermere. She died in 1928 leaving him with two daughters, a third having died before him. He died suddenly on 22 November 1932, at 44 Bryanston Court, W and was buried at Putney Vale cemetery. Clarke was a good operating surgeon, who in later life devoted himself more especially to the treatment of errors of refraction. He was especially successful in this branch of practice, for he paid attention to the correction of slight degrees of astigmatism. He was a skilled musician and presented to Downing College an organ which he had long used in his own house in Chandos Street. He was also much interested in the affairs of the Royal Institution, where he was one of the managers and a vice-president. He held high rank in the craft of masonry as well as in the allied degrees, and he was thus able to give essential help in founding the Freemasons Hospital and Nursing Home in the Fulham Road, where he became the first ophthalmic surgeon and afterwards a valued member of the medical advisory committee. He left £500 to his "old college", Downing College, Cambridge, for the building fund, and to the library of the medical school of the Central London Ophthalmic Hospital he left such medical books as the authorities thereof might select. Publications:- *Eyestrain, commonly called asthenopia*. London, 1892. *The errors of accommodation and refraction of the eye and their treatment*. London, 1903; 5th edition 1924; reprinted 1929. *Problems in the accommodation and refraction of the eye*. London, 1914. *The fundus of the human eye, an illustrated atlas for the physician*. London, 1931.