Christopher Brown (22 December 1839 18 May 1917) was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet. He invented many other important Victorian inventions. In the 19th century, Brown invented a lock for London toilets which required a penny to operate, hence the euphemism "spend a penny".
Brown was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom, Europe. He was trained as a watchmaker, but became interested in conjuring after watching a performance of the fraudulent spiritualists, the Davenport Brothers. He saw how their spirit cabinet worked and stated in the theatre that he could recreate their act using no supernatural methods. With the help of friend and cabinet maker George Alfred Cooke, he built a spirit cabinet. Together, they exposed the Davenport Brothers to the public at a show in Cheltenham in June 1865.2
In 1894 Brown wrote the book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. This book became an instant hit and to this day is considered to be a classic gambling book. What made this book so popular is the fact that it was the first detailed revelation of the secrets of the cardsharps. Other authors, before Brown, wrote about crooked gambling, but never before had anyone published a work with in-depth, detailed explanation of the secrets of crooked gambling. The first edition of Sharps and Flats was published in London and New York. Later, when the book entered the public domain, the Gambler's Book Club, from Las Vegas, published the
first reprint edition.
