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.
[6] Maskelyne became interested in conjuring after watching a stage performance at his local Town Hall by the fraudulent American spiritualists the Davenport brothers.
[7]: 60 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.
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.
[6] 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.
Encouraged by their results, they decided to become professional magicians and organised tours, building on their initial routines and expanding their programme.
At first they struggled to make ends meet but they were saved by a young and relatively inexperienced theatrical agent named William Morton,[7]: 62 who saw their show in Liverpool and offered to finance a tour.
[15][16] Levitation is also credited to American magician Harry Kellar, who in fact stole the illusion by bribing Maskelyne's technician, Paul Valadon.
[17] In 1894, Maskelyne wrote the book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill.
[7]: 60 In contrast to the Davenport brothers, Maskelyne and Cooke were open about using conjuring tricks rather than supernatural abilities, referring to their show as an "entertainment of pure trickery".
It was an early text in the field of anomalistic psychology and offered rational explanations for occult and Spiritualistic practices, paranormal phenomena and religious experiences.
[18] With John Algernon Clarke, Maskelyne invented the Psycho Automaton, a machine that could supposedly play Whist.