John Nevil Maskelyne

John Nevil Maskelyne (22 December 1839 – 18 May 1917) was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet, along with other Victorian-era devices. He worked with magicians George Alfred Cooke and David Devant, and many of his illusions are still performed today. His book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill is considered a classic overview of card sharp practices. In 1914 he founded the Occult Committee, a group to "investigate claims to supernatural power and to expose fraud".

Early life

Maskelyne was born on 22 December 1839 at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England to John Nevil Maskelyne (1800–1875), a saddler, and his wife Harriet (1812-1871), née Brunsdon. He was baptized at St Lawrence, Swindon, near, Cheltenham, on 26 January 1840. He trained as a watchmaker.

Maskelyne claimed to be a descendant of Nevil Maskelyne (1732–1811), the Astronomer Royal; although some sources repeat this, other recent biographical accounts establish otherwise.

Career

Maskelyne became interested in conjuring after watching a stage performance at his local Town Hall by the fraudulent American spiritualists the Davenport brothers. He saw how the Davenports' spirit cabinet illusion worked, and stated to the audience in the theatre that he could recreate their act using no supernatural methods. With the help of a friend, cabinet maker George Alfred Cooke, he built a version of the gigantic cabinet. Together, they revealed the Davenport Brothers' trickery to the public at a show in Cheltenham in June 1865, sponsored by the 10th Cotswold Rifle Corps to which they belonged. In addition to the pseudo-spiritualist phenomena of the Davenports, they added comedy illusions which included the transformation of Maskelyne and Cooke into an "unprotected female" and a gorilla. Inspired by the acclaim they received for their clever exposure of the deception, the two men repeated their show several times.