Robert "Plumber" Brown was the second, the younger of the two Robert Brown's to pay for Dumbarton at much the same time, the other being "Sparrow". They even overlapped for three seasons. Plumber was named for his trade. He was a plumber, one born in Motherwell but moving to the Vale of Leven as a young child as his father followed his work as a coachman to the wealthy. 

He was also a one club man although he spent the better part of the second part of his life still in the shipyards but in Dundee. He joined Dumbarton in 1882 as an attacking half-back cum inside-forward. In winning the 1883 Scottish Cup Final he was the latter in combination with "Sparrow" Brown outside him. More local representative honours followed until in 1885 he was finally selected for the international team. As it happened he had to refuse as the game was in Glasgow and he was on a work assignment in London. However, when Scotland travelled to Wales for the next game and were a man short he was able to get to Wrexham to fill in at inside left rather than inside right for his only cap. Scotland won 1-8.  

Then it was a last hurrah as in 1887 he was in the Dumbarton side that lost the Cup Final followed by retirement from the game still relatively young. However, that same year was the one, in which he married. His bride was Eliza Brodie, born in Fife but living in Renton. They were to have three children, two boys and a daughter, with their eldest son killed in the Great War. All three children were born in Dumbarton until in 1906 the family moved to North Tayside. And it was there he spent the rest of his days, retiring in 1933 at the ripe age of seventy-three and dying there in 1940 at almost eighty-one. He would be outlived by Eliza by fully fifteen years. She would die in in 1955, aged eighty-nine still in the city.