Stevens William Brown (15 April 1875 – 21 October 1957) was an English professional

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

er who played in three

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officia ...

matches for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

in the space of 10 days in 1899. Brown was born in

Cliffe, Kent Cliffe is a village on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, England, reached from the Medway Towns by a three-mile (4.8 km) journey along the B2000 road. Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the Thames marshes, Cliffe offers views of ...

and initially worked in the cement industry as a labourer. He was taken on at Kent's Tonbridge Nursery as a promising young cricketer in 1899 and played his three first-class matches during that season, against

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, the

Marylebone Cricket Club Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London. The club was formerly the governing body of cricket retaining considerable global influenc ...

and Sussex.Lewis P (2014) ''For Kent and Country'' pp.121–122. Brighton: Reveille Press. He was used as a bowler, as most of the young professionals at the Nursery were, taking five wickets. He remained part of the Nursery until 1901.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 91–92.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 21 December 2020.) In 1911 Brown was the landlord of a public house in Chatham but by 1918, when he enlisted in the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

, he was working as an engineer. Brown, who had become eligible for service only after the Military Services Act raised the age limit for enlistment to between 41 and 50 in 1918, served at the former

Royal Naval Air Service The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...

Experimental Station at Stratford as a Mechanic 2nd Class until the end of the war. He was demobilised in January 1919 and died, aged 82, at

Watford Watford () is a town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne, Hertfordshire, River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal en ...

in Hertfordshire in October 1957.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Stevens 1875 births 1957 deaths English cricketers Kent cricketers People from Cliffe, Kent Royal Naval Air Service personnel of World War I Royal Navy sailors