William Carpenter (flat-Earth theorist)

William Carpenter (25 February 1830 – 1 September 1896) was an English printer and author, and a proponent of the flat Earth theory, active in England and the United States in the nineteenth century. Carpenter immigrated to the United States and continued his advocacy of the Flat Earth movement.
Life.
Carpenter was born on 25 February 1830 in Greenwich, Kent, England, and baptised on 30 April 1830 at Maize Hill, formerly known as Bethel – Independent in Greenwich. He was the eldest son of Samuel Carpenter and Lucy Moss. He married Annie Gillett in January–March 1853, and they eventually had six children.
In Greenwich, Carpenter became a printer and stenographer by profession. In 1879, he moved from England to Baltimore, Maryland, where he continued his work as a printer. The 1880 US federal census shows him and his wife Annie with six children aged 11–25 years, whose occupations included milliner, architect, professor of music, and florist.
After arriving in Baltimore, Carpenter taught classes in shorthand. He published two books on the subject and became known as "Professor Carpenter". Carpenter had other eclectic beliefs per his Baltimore Sun obituary. "For many years Mr. Carpenter had also been a vegetarian, a believer in the power of mesmerism and a spiritualist. Upon each of these questions he wrote pamphlets. He thought that the eating of meat was responsible for many of the ills that humanity is heir to."
Carpenter died on Tuesday, 1 September 1896 at 1316 North Central Avenue, his home, in Baltimore. Per his obit in the Baltimore Sun, his death was the result "to a stroke of apoplexy on Sunday". In the year before his death he had "a number of slighter strokes"
Advocate of the flat-Earth theory.
Carpenter was a passionate advocate of the flat-Earth theory, which holds that the Earth is not a globe.
Carpenter, a printer originally from Greenwich, England, published "Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed – Proving the Earth not a Globe" in eight parts from 1864 under the name "Common Sense". He later emigrated to Baltimore, where he published "A hundred proofs the Earth is not a Globe" in 1885.
Carpenter argued that:
Carpenter was a proponent of English writer Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1885), who produced a pamphlet, with Carpenter's assistance, called "Zetetic Astronomy" in 1849 arguing for a flat Earth and published results of many experiments that tested the curvatures of water over a long drainage ditch, followed by another, called "The inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scripture". Rowbotham also produced studies, mostly printed by Carpenter, that purported to show the effects of ships disappearing below the horizon could be explained by the laws of perspective in relation to the human eye.
Principal works.
Some of Carpenter's works found commercial publishers, but many were printed, bound, and sold by himself, at times under the pen-name "Common Sense". An incomplete list includes:
He also published two magazines, "Carpenter's Folly", of which only a few issues were printed in 1887, and "Shorthand", which was issued from 1893 to 1894.