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Bob Schadewald, The Plane Truth

First published on this website, 2015. Copyright © 2015 Wendy S. Schadewald.
Bob Schadewald (1943–2000) was an authority on the history of the flatearth movement. This book on the subject was incomplete at the time of his death, and has been lightly edited for publication here.

Also available as an e-book. See the E-book index and Notes on downloading e-books

E-book cover Copyright Preface by Lois Schadewald Prologue: The Ancient View of the Earth Chapter 1: The Founding Father Chapter 2: Hampden and the Old Bedford Canal Chapter 3: The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed Chapter 4: The Universal Zetetic Society Chapter 5: Carpenter and the American Flat-Earth Movement Chapter 6: Elsewhere Across the Plane Chapter 7: Lady Blount and the Decline of British Flat-Earthism Chapter 8: Voliva and Zion Chapter 9: Johnson and Johnson: Two Witnesses Appendix A: The Flat-Earth Bible Appendix B: Additional Notes on Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, 1st ed. 1865 Appendix C: The Fathers of the Church and Flat-Earthism Appendix D: Geocentricity Notes References

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THE PLANE TRUTH

A HISTORY OF THE FLAT-EARTH MOVEMENT

Robert J. Schadewald
Copyright © 2015 Wendy S. Schadewald

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Preface

by Lois Schadewald

The Plane Truth by my brother Bob (Robert J. Schadewald) has been a work in progress since at least 1984, although I’m sure the idea of it dates to the 1970s. It’s a work that is unfinished in places, perhaps more detailed than one would have thought possible in places, perfectly constructed in places, and all over the (flat) map in still other places. Bob worked on The Plane Truth until the week he died in 2000. Of all things, completing this book to his satisfaction was of the utmost importance to him. I believe that the book remained unfinished because Bob felt that it never met his standards closely enough to be published. Bob hovered over this book and wouldn’t allow it to come to fruition. My brother was an incredibly talented writer, but in some ways, I think, he was never totally satisfied with anything he had written. So he kept writing and rewriting this book. The dull glow of this not-quite-finished hue is evident in places within this work, but also the eloquence and beauty of Bob’s finished writing shines in other places.

The Plane Truth is offered for what it is: an unfinished scholarly work on the history and background of flat-earth belief sprinkled through with the characters and colorful personalities of those involved. “It’s a small, flat world” was a phrase Bob often used when hearing of some unlikely coincidence. For Bob, flat-earth analogy could fit almost any situation. When he discussed creationism (the precursor of intelligent design) he would explain the argumentation creationists used by comparing it to the argumentation Victorian, England, flat-earthers used. (Spoiler alert: they’re the same.) When creationists promoted a Two-Model Theory (creation/evolution) bill to be taught in schools, Bob wrote a bill called A Balanced Treatment of Flat-Earth Science and Spherical-Earth Science Act. The reaction of Charles Johnson (then president of the Flat Earth Society) can be found in Chapter 9: “Johnson and Johnson”.

It’s hard to know how Bob would have felt now with so many references to flat earth in use. Some examples include Thomas Friedman’s books, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded; Flat Earth Productions (a digital visual effects company); Flat Earth Veggie Crisps; and, here in Minnesota, Flat Earth beer. I know for certain that he would have loved that last one.

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My brother was a student of pseudoscience. It fascinated Bob to try to understand how someone could so firmly believe in an idea that almost everyone else would consider an indicator of insanity or, at least, naiveté. Bob studied not only flat-earth belief, but also creationism, perpetual motion, alternative geodesy (geocentricity, hollow earth, pole shift), Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, and Tesla-mania, to name a few. Of all the pseudosciences Bob studied, flat-earth belief was one of the first and always his favorite. He studied flat-earth belief and history from about 1974. He formed acquaintances with as many people as he could find who believed that the Earth is flat. He travelled to England to research original materials of the British flat-earthers, and he corresponded with likeminded people all over the world in his quest to find out as much as he could about the development and fluctuations of flat-earth belief. He was considered a world expert on the topic.
Although belief in a flat earth dates to pre-biblical times, modern flat-earth belief got its start in Trowbridge, England, during an evening lecture on January 15, 1849. The Bible, said the lecturer who called himself “Parallax,” teaches that the earth is flat. Modern astronomy, he said, is based on mere theories. Zetetic astronomy deals in facts. This itinerant lecturer is the main subject of Chapter 1, “The Founding Father.” Zetetic astronomy is dealt with in further detail in Appendix B, “Additional Notes on Zetetic Astronomy.”
The Victorian flat-earthers managed to spread their belief to the far corners of the world. Chapters 1 through 4 and 7 discuss the flat-earth movement in Victorian England from its inception in 1849 with Samuel Rowbotham, to its decline which began when Lady Elizabeth Anne Mould Blount left the flat-earth movement in 1923. Chapters 5, 8, and 9 discuss the American flat-earthers, William Carpenter (who immigrated to America from England in 1879), Wilbur Glenn Voliva (who presided over a flat-earth theocracy in Zion, Illinois, in 1906), and Charles Johnson (president of the Flat Earth Society from 1972 to 2001), respectively. Chapter 6, “Elsewhere Across the Plane,” discusses flat-earthers in Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand. Chapter 6 is probably the most unfinished piece to be found in this work. Chapter 9, “Johnson and Johnson,” was also unfinished, but has been made more complete by additions from myself and Bob Forrest. It contains some duplicated material from articles written by Bob about Charles Johnson that can be found on the web.
This ebook would have never been possible if it hadn’t been for Bob

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Forrest contacting my sister-in-law, Wendy, to ask permission to publish the first four chapters as an open source book. As it turns out, my brother had sent these four chapters to Bob Forrest in Manchester in 1984. Wendy contacted me to get my opinion of this, I thought it was a great idea and contacted Bob Forrest to let him know that I had the remaining chapters of the book in my possession. So it was that we decided to publish the book in its entirety. Bob Forrest’s friend, Michael Behrend, provided the expertise of converting the Word files that I had into ebook format. Michael Behrend and Bob Forrest also added illustrations that were missing. Both edited the chapters, correcting spelling errors, incorrect terminology, incorrect dates and so forth. Their combined knowledge of flat-earth history was invaluable. I had considered trying to publish The Plane Truth on my own, but I could have never fact checked it. I don’t have that type of knowledge. This book is vastly improved by the input of both Bob Forrest and Michael Behrend, and I know my brother would have been very grateful for the work they’ve done. I am also very grateful for their work and so happy to see my brother’s favorite project completed and made available for anyone with similar interests.
Bob left a list of people he wanted to acknowledge for their help with The Plane Truth. I offer it here with no embellishment (except the few comments Bob left) and two additions of my own—Michael Behrend and Sue O’Donnell, for her help with editing.
1. Manny Sillman 2. Paul Nelson 3. Bob Forrest 4. Charles Johnson (once nominated me to Outstanding Young Men of
America) 5. SDA guys 6. Washington people re DeFord 7. Chuck Long (donated material) 8. Martin Gardner (ditto) 9. Ronald Numbers (ditto) 10. Dennis Lien 11. Duane T. Gish provided numerous insights into the psychology of flat-
earthism. 12. Mrs. H. I. Moran, City Librarian of the Durban (South Africa) Municipal
Library. 13. Frank Awbrey 14. Mrs. Gail H. McFarlane, Glasgow University Library 15. Robert C. McGregor, Glasgow District Libraries

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16. Geoffrey Davenport, Royal College of Physicians 17. Catherine Boden, William Salt Library, Stafford, England
More of Bob’s writings can be found in the book Worlds of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair, a collection of Bob’s work that I published in 2008 after Bob’s death.
Lois Schadewald, July 2015

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Prologue: The Ancient View of the Earth

When Columbus sailed in 1492, he knew he could safely reach the Indies
by sailing west. His crewmen were less confident. Fearing they would slip down over the edge of the globe, never to return, they nearly mutinied. Columbus finally convinced them that their fears were groundless, for the earth is flat. The rest is history. Columbus and his ships sailed safely across the flat sea and reached America. Or so Charles K. Johnson, late president of the Flat Earth Society, told the story. (The orthodox version of the story, of course, is that Columbus believed the earth was spherical, but his crew didn’t share his belief, and feared that they might sail over the edge of a flat earth!)

The spherical heresy has incensed literal-minded Christians since time immemorial; for the flat-earth cosmology the ancient Hebrews borrowed from the Babylonians is implicit throughout the Bible. The modern flatearth movement arose in 19th century England as a reaction against the burgeoning fields of astronomy and geology. Its philosophy is summed up by a bumper sticker now popular among fundamentalists: “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”

Before the dawn of history, those people who gave the matter any thought probably concluded that the earth was essentially flat. From any sort of hill, the calm surface of the ocean looks flat as a flapjack. It’s not surprising that none of the early cosmologies which are still preserved— Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Egyptian—describe a spherical earth.

The Babylonians believed that the universe consists of a reasonably flat earth surrounded by water, with the whole covered by a huge dome. According to their cosmology, water is above the dome and below the earth. The celestial bodies are gods and goddesses, and their movements and positions with respect to one another have profound effects on mundane affairs. This cosmology and its associated astrology were common to much of the ancient Middle East. The essence of the Babylonian cosmology was adopted by the ancient Hebrews and it underlies the text of the Bible.

Nowhere does the Bible explicitly mention the earth’s shape, but it is a flat-earth book from beginning to end. Thus in Genesis 1:6, “God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the waters, to separate water from water.’ So God

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made the vault, and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and so it was; and God called the vault heaven.” Also, the order Genesis ascribes to creation—earth on the first day and the sun, moon, planets, and stars on the fourth—makes no sense in the light of our present cosmology. But it’s perfectly reasonable to a flat-earther. Elsewhere, the Bible comes closer to explicitly describing the earth’s shape. Thus Isaiah 40:21–22 says, “Do you not know … that God sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth, whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers? He stretches out the skies like a curtain, he spreads them out like a tent to live in …” Numerous passages state that the earth is immovable and others treat the sun and moon as minor bodies. In the New Testament, the presumed shape of the earth is evident in the story of the temptation of Jesus. According to Matthew 4:8, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.” The word translated as “world” is the Greek kosmos, meaning the whole universe. From a sufficiently high mountain, one could see all the kingdoms of a flat world of limited extent, but the passage is nonsense when applied to a spherical earth. The same is true of Revelation 1:6, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him …”
But the flat-earth theory was already passé when the New Testament was written. The Greeks are usually credited with proposing that the earth is a globe. Pythagoras and some of his followers even suggested that it rotates around the sun rather than the other way round. By the fourth century B.C., the globular opinion dominated Greece. Aristotle offered three proofs that the earth is a globe: (a) ships sailing out of port seem to disappear over the horizon, (b) sailors voyaging far to the south see stars above the southern horizon that aren’t visible from more northern latitudes, and (c) at a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth on the moon is curved.
The concept of a spherical earth found favor in the Hellenic world and even among some of the early Jews. But then, as now, many were determined to cut science to fit their Bibles. The Fathers of the Church were not unanimous about the shape of the earth. Lactantius and Epiphanius insisted that the earth is flat; Clement of Alexandria and Origen insisted that it is round. But the majority thought it was flat. Apparently, Eusebius was also a great flat-earther, and he may have been of special importance to Cosmas Indicopleustes, of whom more presently. For a couple centuries, these worthies tried to stamp out the spherical heresy among the faithful, bombarding them with verses like those already quoted.

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This first phase of the Christian flat-earth movement peaked early in the 6th century, when the Egyptian merchant and monk Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote his Christian Topography. Cosmas argued that the earth’s surface is a rectangle, surrounded by seas, and covered by a vaulted roof. Indeed, the Cosmas cosmos looked essentially like a steamer trunk. It measured four hundred days journey east and west by two hundred north and south. Far in the north lay a great conical mountain behind which the sun disappeared at sunset. Rain fell from windows in the vaulted roof, and angels propelled the heavenly bodies on their ways.
The Cosmas cosmos was common sense cosmology. As already stated— but it deserves emphasizing—from any sort of hill, the ocean does look as flat as a pool table.
Cosmas got many of his arguments (and perhaps some of his odium theologicum) from the Fathers of the Church, notably Lactantius and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Cosmas took the shew-bread table in the Jewish tabernacle as his model of the earth, flat and twice as long as it was broad. He argued from scripture that the sun must be near and small, since it moved backward for Hezekiah. Again, according to the Bible (Revelation 1:6, quoted above), everyone on earth will see Jesus coming through the clouds when he returns in glory. Obviously, that’s impossible if the earth is a sphere. Near the end of Christian Topography, Cosmas wrote, “We say therefore with Isaiah that the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, with Job that it is joined to the earth, and with Moses that the length of the earth is greater than its breadth.”
Despite his powerful allies, Cosmas was fighting a losing battle. The geographical and astronomical–astrological works of the spherical Ptolemy had mostly taken over well before he wrote his great work. A century later, the great churchman Isidore of Seville sided with Ptolemy in his De Natura Rerum. In the 8th century, the Venerable Bede adopted the sphere. Later, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Roger Bacon all rejected the Christian Topography. The revolution was quiet but thorough, and within a few centuries the ancient Hebrew cosmology had died out among the educated. By the late Middle Ages, the question was considered settled, and theologians had to content themselves with wrangling over whether the antipodes—lands on the other side of the globe —were inhabited.
Such was the situation when Columbus showed up in the Spanish court, hat in hand. The dramatic story of his debate with Spanish scholars there

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is from Washington Irving’s History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, and it’s every bit as historical as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” What problems Columbus had with his crew during the voyage seem to have been unrelated to the shape of the earth, though, as we saw in the opening paragraph, Charles Johnson disagreed.
By the time Galileo tangled with the Inquisition, Magellan and others had circumnavigated the globe, and these voyages stilled most lingering doubts about the earth’s shape. Galileo got in trouble, not for claiming that the earth is round, but for arguing that it is not the center of the universe. This dispute set the pattern for the next two hundred years, during which fundamentalists directed their efforts toward smashing the ungodly Copernican system and returning to geocentricity. (We’ll discuss this ongoing effort in a later chapter.) Except for a few isolated individuals, no one seriously challenged the spherical assumption. Until, that is, the nineteenth century ….

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Chapter 1: The Founding Father
Trouble brewed in Paradise, and 21-year-old Samuel Birley Rowbotham
faced the challenge pistol in hand. Rowbotham was Secretary of the Cambridgeshire Community, a socialist colony at Manea Fen in central England. Founded in 1838, the colony was supposed to exemplify the New Moral World envisioned by Robert Owen, England’s leading socialist. Now, less than a year later, it was torn by dissension, and most of the colonists were assembled to forcibly expel Rowbotham from office.

The headquarters of the Cambridgeshire Community stood on the east bank of the Old Bedford Canal, just north of Welche’s Dam. The canal runs perfectly straight and unobstructed from Welche’s Dam northeast to Welney Bridge, a distance of about six miles. In their spare time, Secretary Rowbotham and some like-minded colonists performed experiments on this stretch of the canal to determine the curvature of the waters. They found none. Armed with this experimental evidence and a long list of scriptures, Rowbotham had attempted to impose upon the colony the doctrine that the earth is flat.

No one could deny that Manea Fen looks flat. The Fens district of England lies south of the Wash, a silted-up bay of the North Sea. Comprising about a half-million acres, it was mostly reedy, uninhabited swamp during historical times, although the last glacier left islands of higher ground. The Romans built some embankments along the Wash, and an ancient tradition holds that these were part of a scheme to drain the Fens. The Roman embankments were insufficient, and the Fens suffered numerous inundations by the sea in medieval times.

The southeastern section of fenland extends almost to the ancient university town of Cambridge. In 1634, Francis, Earl of Bedford, formed a consortium to drain this area, now known as the Bedford Level. In those days, universities didn’t teach civil engineering, and Bedford turned to a talented Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden. The project took nearly two decades. Vermuyden built dikes along the coast, levees along the rivers, and drainage ditches through the fens. Windmills pumped the fen water into the rivers where it would not flow of its own accord. Ancient river channels were deepened and an artificial river, now known as the Old Bedford River, was dug; a cut parallel to this, the New Bedford River, was

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added about fifteen years later. By the 19th century, the Old Bedford had been adapted for barge traffic and was known as the Old Bedford Canal.

Part of the Old and New Bedford Rivers and surrounding fenland.
The Manea Fen property actually belonged to William Hodson, a wealthy farmer who lived near Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. A former Methodist lay preacher, Hodson was enamored with the ideas of Robert Owen, then England’s leading socialist. Owen advocated a network of self-sufficient socialist colonies, but no one knew whether his ideas would work in practice. In the fall of 1838, Hodson decided to build an Owenite colony on the Manea Fen estate.
The former fenland was wonderfully fertile; the area was (and still is) a center for barley, wheat, hay, and oats. [ref. 1.1] Hodson believed Manea Fen’s 200 acres could support fifty families, and he planned to build fifty houses plus a community building and workshops. All buildings would be heated by a central heating plant, and the colony would have its own steam engine to run its threshing machine and other equipment. To ensure the colony’s self sufficiency, the colonists would include members of all major trades. Hodson advertised in the Owenite paper, the New Moral World, for someone to run the colony. One applicant was 21-year-old Samuel Birley Rowbotham.
Rowbotham was born in Manchester, where Robert Owen had once run a cotton mill. Manchester remembered Owen for his management skill, benevolent policies, and improvements in cotton spinning machinery, so when he began preaching socialism, Owen found a ready following there.

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Rowbotham was one of many who attended Owen’s Manchester lectures and found his political and economic ideas appealing. Though he never formally joined a local Owenite group, Rowbotham became a hanger-on, well-known to many socialist leaders.
When William Hodson met Rowbotham to discuss his plans for the colony, he was immediately impressed by the young man. Orthodox Owenites tended to be freethinkers, but the former minister found that Rowbotham combined Christian piety with socialist enthusiasm. Rowbotham got the job, and the two began organizing the community.
Most Owenite leaders feared Hodson’s community would be too small to survive, and the National Community Friendly Society never endorsed the project. Several individual Owenite chapters did, however, and the “Cambridgeshire Community” was organized with Rowbotham as Secretary. The charter called for them to acquire Manea Fen from Hodson over a twenty year period. Construction began on a large community building on the canal bank, and Rowbotham beat the bushes for colonists. He flushed out a motley assortment.
The first recruits arrived at Manea Fen at about Christmas of 1838. As one disgusted socialist later described it, “They immediately commenced finding fault with one another and with everything about them.” [ref. 1.2] The colonists ate, drank, caroused, and argued with gusto, but they showed little enthusiasm for work. Rowbotham tended to select colonists for their religious orthodoxy rather than their personal character and useful skills. His recruits constantly battled with the freethinking orthodox Owenites.
The colony struggled through the winter of 1839 on subsidies provided by Hodson. The divisions among the colonists were papered over and the necessary work somehow got done. In the spring, the crops were planted and a semblance of harmony achieved. But early summer brought a crisis.
Rowbotham had a secret agenda from the beginning. When he first saw Hodson’s ad, he consulted a map of Cambridgeshire and noted its many straight waterways. A flat-earther from his youth, Rowbotham saw them as ideally suited for testing the alleged convexity of the earth, and he was delighted to discover that Manea Fen actually fronted on the Old Bedford Canal. [ref. 1.3] It’s not clear exactly what experiments Rowbotham and his colleagues performed in the summer of 1839, for his later accounts are

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contradictory. In one version, he claimed that he sat in the water and observed with a telescope a few inches above the surface. From this vantage point he could see boats so far down the canal that they should have been out of sight behind the curvature of the earth. In another version, he claimed he had set up a surveyor’s transit on a bridge and rigged two boats with tall masts carrying flags at the same height above the water as the crosshair. The boats were dispatched in opposite directions on the canal, but the flags failed to drop below the line of sight as required by spherical theory. Whatever the experiments, Rowbotham and a few others decided to make flat-earth fundamentalism a tenet of the Cambridgeshire Community, and that was the final straw.
A stormy meeting of the Manea Fen socialists ensued, and for once Rowbotham’s silver tongue failed him. He was shouted down and voted out. When he refused to go, the council boarded up the door to his room. It was then that Rowbotham got his pistol (unloaded, he later claimed) and sent his opponents scurrying. Hodson supported Rowbotham, and Samuel sacked the entire council.
Flushed with victory, Rowbotham arranged a series of flat-earth lectures in the nearby town of March. When he returned from the first lecture, however, he found himself locked out again. This time, Hodson wouldn’t support him, and Rowbotham and seven followers—“undesirables” he had recruited—were thrown out of the colony. The exiles moved to nearby Wisbech, where they set up housekeeping and organized another series of flat-earth lectures. These were not successful, so the little troupe hit the road for London. There they disbanded and dispersed.
Let’s now take a closer look at Rowbotham himself.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham was born in Didsbury Chapelry, a small district on the outskirts of Manchester, in 1816. The Rowbothams were a numerous clan in surrounding Lancashire, with roots going back many centuries. Samuel’s father was probably a middle-class merchant and his mother’s family, the Birleys, included numerous well-to-do industrialists. The Birleys owned the Egyptian Cotton Mills in Manchester and collaborated with the Scottish inventor Charles MacIntosh to produce rubberized raincoats that still bear his name. In 1830, they helped establish the Manchester–Liverpool Railway to haul cotton from the Liverpool wharves to their mills.

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Samuel Birley Rowbotham.
As a youth, Samuel was pious but rebellious, and his attitude toward school teachers often put him at the wrong end of a birch switch. As he told it 50 years later, [note 1.1] he first began to doubt Newton at age 7. At Christmas time the following year, Samuel’s school held a program on the system of the universe, and the Rowbothams attended. The Newtonian nonsense so offended young Samuel that he and a friend tried to sneak out. They were apprehended, to the mortification of his parents. Samuel’s father caned him and transferred him to a different school.
Shortly afterward, the rebellious boy was sent to live with his paternal grandfather. This gentleman was something of a mathematician and a great admirer of Newton. He had a small scientific library, a large and expensive orrery, [note 1.2] and several telescopes. The old man showed his grandson some of the astronomical wonders to be seen with a telescope, including the mountains of the moon. Even then, Samuel was not convinced that the moon is a large and distant body.
One day, little Samuel stood between his grandfather’s knees while the elder Rowbotham discussed the wonders of the universe with some friends. Finally the old man asked the boy if he was convinced. “Grandpa,” he replied, “you make it sound very nice, but you don’t prove what you say. You only talk and calculate; some day, when I get a big man, I will show you and all these gentlemen that you are wrong, and I will prove it. I will spend all my money and all my time doing it.” [ref. 1.4]
His grandfather’s friends inclined toward infidelity, and Samuel noted that they based their arguments against the Bible on the Newtonian system. As he grew older, Samuel studied the Bible assiduously, and he found there confirmation of his astronomical suspicions. The Bible clearly shows that

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the ancient Hebrews considered the earth flat and immovable and covered with the solid dome of the sky. Samuel decided it was either Newton or the Bible. Sometimes he was not sure which:
Again and again, the feeling came over me that as the Newtonian system appeared so plausible and so grand in its extent and comprehensiveness, it might after all be correct; and, if so, there could be no heaven for man’s future enjoyment; no higher existence than on this earth; no spiritual and immortal creatures, and therefore no God or Creator. [ref. 1.5]
As he matured, Rowbotham read widely in the popular scientific literature, and he probably attended lectures on various aspects of science.
Meanwhile, he vacillated between Biblical literalism and atheism, sometimes leaning toward Newton, sometimes toward the Bible. It was while in this state that Rowbotham embraced the ideas of Robert Owen. With a broad if superficial knowledge of science, Rowbotham sometimes lectured Owenite groups on scientific topics, and he proved to be a gifted speaker. It was his speaking ability that caught the attention of the leading Owenites and ultimately landed him the job at the Cambridgeshire Community.
After his brief adventure at the Manea Fen colony, Rowbotham dropped from sight for three years. In 1842, he surfaced again in Manchester with a 64-page pamphlet entitled An Inquiry into the Cause of Natural Death, or Death from Old Age, and Developing an Entirely New and Certain Method of Preserving Active and Healthful Life for an Extraordinary Period. Besides the extraordinarily long title, several things are notable about the pamphlet. First, Rowbotham began his life-long practice of operating under pseudonyms, here calling himself “Tryon.” Second, his publisher, Abel Heywood, was a publisher of socialist writings. Third, Rowbotham did not name or claim any medical credentials, although the text implies that he was a doctor.
Rowbotham’s one-page introduction to his Inquiry is dated January 1, 1842. Acknowledging that readers might find some of his ideas startling, he insisted that they were solidly based:
Everything of a metaphysical or speculative character has been carefully avoided; so that whoever may feel disposed to raise objections, he will be obliged to do so not in accordance with any whim, prejudice, or superstition, but by denying the truth of the premises or the legitimacy of the deductions; or, in other words, by combating with truth and reason. [ref. 1.6]

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Rowbotham argued that the body hardens from conception to death. The process begins with the growth of bones in the embryo and continues through maturity, ending with the hardening of the aged body. Numerous observations support this view. The bones of children are soft and tough, but adult bones are brittle and easily broken by falls. Tendons and cartilage harden with age. The eyes become dim, the ears grow deaf, blood vessels clog and solidify until the blood becomes stationary. Death is the consequence of this general hardening. He summed it up thus:
Old age, then, is only a name given to certain conditions of the body, which conditions may be brought on sooner or later according as the process of ossification, or consolidation, proceeds with more or less velocity. [ref. 1.7]
The aging process, however, is not inevitable. Without proper care, the human body dies little by little; properly cared for, it is virtually immortal. Aging primarily results from “earthy matter” such as phosphate and carbonate of lime, which clogs up the body. Proper care means a diet which avoids earthy matter.
Rowbotham recommended fresh vegetables, greens, fruit, and meat. Sugar and alcohol are harmless in moderation, but salt is very bad and so is hard water. Cider and perry [note 1.3] both contain malic acid which dissolves earthy matter, so they are healthful. Wheat flour is bad news, and white bread is the very “staff of death.” [ref. 1.8]
Numerous groups of people and notable individuals have reputedly achieved great longevity. Rowbotham claimed that the ancient Gymnosophists [note 1.4] ate a healthy diet; consequently, they lived so long that they tired of life and committed suicide in disgust. The Irish ate little wheat and lived long. Women generally ate less earthy matter and out-lived men. Eating sparingly promotes longevity even if the food is high in earthy matter. Rowbotham claimed that long-lived drunkards are invariably sparing eaters. [note 1.5]
Even after a lifetime of bad diet, health could be restored. After nine months of investigation, Rowbotham had reached a firm conclusion:
By a careful and continued use of the Tartaric, Hydro-chloric, and Nitric acids, in peculiar states of combination, the most wonderful effects have been produced. I have no wish whatever to keep the proportions and particular modes of combining them, and the proper doses, from the public, so soon as experience has shown the best mode of exhibiting them in every variety of complaint. Up to this moment, I have had three hundred and twenty of the most severe and obstinate cases under my care. The plan of treatment has been

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to put the patient upon a peculiar diet (one consisting of articles as free as possible from earthy matter), and to administer certain combinations of the tartaric, nitric, and hydro-chloric acids, to dissolve what I conceived to be the matter which obstructed the system; and in NO case where this has been attended to has it failed. [ref. 1.9]
Three hundred twenty successes without a failure is an unbelievable success rate. Rowbotham summarized several of his cases. Five patients were cured of severe heart palpitations. Several were cured of rheumatism, paralysis, and scrofula. A three-year-old boy, afflicted with a hideous skin condition, was restored to health. Rowbotham concluded that with proper diet, humans can live for an indefinable period without any medicine.
The pamphlet is a curiously-tossed salad of research and rationalization. Rowbotham displayed an uncommon knowledge of basic chemistry, and he had done some experimenting of his own. His citations of published experimental results and statistical studies prove that he read widely. His text reveals no monetary motive beyond selling the pamphlet. But he learned fast.
In 1845, Abel Heywood published a two-part second edition of An Inquiry into the Cause of Natural Death. Part 1 is based on the first edition, but it is substantially revised and enlarged. Part 2, somewhat longer, is a separate pamphlet with page numbers continued from part 1. The author, “S. Rowbotham,” is described as author of Essay on Human Parturition. [note 1.6]
The second edition of part 1 differs significantly from the first edition. For one thing, it is much more hard-hitting. Wheat bread is not only the “Staff of Death,” but Rowbotham charged that unscrupulous millers adulterated their flour with ground-up chalk or other earthy substances. Some millers, Rowbotham hinted darkly, might grind up bones from charnel houses:
Ay! start not reader; perhaps the last morsel of bread which found its way to thy stomach was contaminated with the bony remains of thine own grandmother! [ref. 1.10]
Lime phosphate still causes aging and death. Sickness and disease are still deemed proportionate to food intake, and readers are advised to eat less if they wish to live longer. But the healthful effects of tartaric, nitric and hydrochloric acids, so prominent in the first edition, are gone from the second.

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Part 2 introduces free phosphorus as the touchstone of life. Phosphoric acid reduces appetite while providing healthful free phosphorus. Continuous use of phosphoric acid reduces the desire for narcotics like alcohol and opium, and it reduces sexual desire (a pious Victorian touch) while increasing sexual potency. [ref. 1.11] In fact, Rowbotham declared pointedly, some men and women in their seventies had all powers restored through its use. [ref. 1.12] Not until the second to the last page did he finally get to the point:
The dose of phosphoric acid for an adult, one drachm, to half-an-ounce; but the reader had better seek the advice of the author, which will be given freely. [ref. 1.13]
Perhaps. But in later years, Rowbotham’s advice was anything but free.
Neither edition of Inquiry into the Cause of Natural Death mentioned the shape of the earth, but Rowbotham had not lost interest in the question. All his life, he never let his medical business interfere with his campaign against astronomy. Perhaps he lectured intermittently from the time he was thrown out of the Manea Fen colony, but his real career as a flat-earth lecturer began about 1848. By then, he had found an alternative to the spherical system.
In 1819, an anonymous author published a 38-page pamphlet entitled The Anti-Newtonian: or, A True System of the Universe, with a Map of Explanation, Proving the Sun to Be a Moveable Body and Central Circling Equator of Equal Time, etc. The work was printed in London at the author’s expense, but it contains no hint of who the writer was, where he lived, or any other biographical information except that he had previously published a work pointing out “the dangerous consequences of speculative astronomy.”
According to The Anti-Newtonian, the earth is a vast circular plain enclosed by a wall of ice. A map in the pamphlet shows the north pole at the center, the south pole at 12 o’clock, east and west respectively at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, and an “unknown pole” at 6 o’clock. The sun’s path is a circle whose center moves back and forth along a line connecting the south pole and the unknown pole to cause the seasons. The half of the earth beyond the east–west line toward the unknown pole is unknown and uninhabitable.
Rowbotham never mentions The Anti-Newtonian in any of his writings, but he almost certainly based his own system on it. He discarded the

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circumferential poles and the unknown, uninhabitable parts of the earth as unworkable. He left the north pole at the center, but he declared that there is no south pole; the impassable wall of ice encircling the known, inhabitable world forms the “southern limit.” East and west are merely those directions at right angles to the compass needle. The equator is a circle centered on the north pole and lying halfway between it and the southern limit. The sun circles above the earth in the region of the equator, moving north or south of the equator to suit the season. Rowbotham called his system zetetic astronomy.

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Rowbotham’s map of the world, showing the sun’s path above it (from
Earth Not a Globe, 1873 edition).
England was then on the brink of an economic renaissance. The 1840s had been known as “the hungry forties,” a time of economic depression, unemployment, and radical labor agitation. The worst abuses of the Industrial Revolution were being curbed. The Factory Act of 1847 prohibited women and boys under 18 from working more than ten hours per day, effectively cutting everyone’s workday to ten hours. Several prominent churchmen who called themselves “Christian Socialists” preached a social gospel and promoted the cause of labor. England weathered the socialist storms, and the decade gave way to prosperity, the years 1851 and 1852 being unprecedented.
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Rowbotham seized upon the growing desire for self-education among the British citizenry. Public education was popular and, with a shortage of university appointments, many scientists and scholars supported themselves and their avocations as traveling lecturers. Besides the more or less respectable scientists, scholars, and clergymen, there were quacks, phrenologists, itinerant preachers, and assorted other opportunists. A popular forum for such lectures was the Mechanics’ Institute.
In 19th century England, a mechanic was someone who worked in a manual occupation, especially a handicraftsman or someone skilled with machinery. The first Mechanics’ Institute was founded in London in 1823 to afford members facilities for self-education through classes and lectures. The idea caught on, and Mechanics’ Institutes sprang up all over England. Many of these institutions evolved until only a small portion of the members belonged to the artisan class.
Late in 1848, Rowbotham sent a description of zetetic astronomy to the Royal Astronomical Society in London. Soon afterward, he hit the road for Trowbridge, a Wiltshire market town lying eight miles southeast of the ancient Roman city of Bath and about a hundred miles west of London. Site of a weekly market and an annual fair from 1200 A.D., Trowbridge was a center for woolen manufacturing by the time of Henry VIII. By 1849, it had a population of about 5,000 and a thriving Mechanics’ Institute, to which Rowbotham delivered a series of lectures beginning on January 15, 1849.
Two correspondents commented on Rowbotham’s lectures in the pages of the Wiltshire Independent. The first wrote as follows:
On Monday and Tuesday evening last, a series of two lectures were delivered here, by Mr. S. Goulden [note 1.7] , to prove modern Astronomy unreasonable and unscriptural, that the earth is a plane or disc, not a globe; the Sun, Moon, and Stars, self-luminous, and the whole within 4000 miles of the earth, &c., &c. His lectures were well attended, were delivered with great skill, the lecturer proving himself thoroughly acquainted with the subject in all its bearings.—In fact the lectures will probably be prolonged for a few evenings longer. [ref. 1.14]
Rowbotham’s lectures were indeed prolonged, and he spoke to the Mechanics’ Institute again on Wednesday evening. Another correspondent, far more critical than the first, wrote as follows:
Considerable amusement, if not instruction, has been afforded at the Rooms of the above Institution the past three evenings by a travelling lecturer who professes to overthrow the Newtonian theory of the universe, and prove that

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the world is a circular flat surrounded by an infinite boundary of ice and a mass of ice in the centre, the north pole. That the land floats on the ocean, that the ocean is supported by vapour and the vapour by infinite fire; that the sun, moon and stars are wholly phosphoric and all within a thousand miles of the earth. … These absurdities were followed by others still more absurd, such as that the sun was gradually nearing the earth, would ultimately consume all its oxygen and then go out, but phospherus [sic] would so impregnate the atmosphere and all things that there would be universal light, and every human being would be a brilliant walking luminary. Then there would be no oxygen to consume animal matter, men would require no food, contract no disease, and consequently never die. [ref. 1.15]
The cosmology so briefly outlined is consistent with that promoted by Rowbotham to the end of his life. His fascination with phosphorus is consistent with his other writings, but his prediction that humans would eventually walk the earth as phosphorescent immortals must have been too much for most listeners. Whatever Rowbotham’s private thoughts on the matter, this idea never again appears in reports of his lectures, nor does it ever appear in his writings. From the reviews, however, it is clear that he had already adopted the modus operandi he would use for the rest of his life.
By the end of 1849, Rowbotham had abandoned the pseudonym S. Goulden and begun calling himself “Parallax.” According to Webster, parallax means “the apparent change in the position of an object resulting from a change in the viewer’s position.” Astronomers use the apparent shift of a star’s position in space, as seen from opposite points in the earth’s orbit, as a measure of distance. Rowbotham probably adopted the name because his theory of perspective involved a parallax-like shift, though cynics suggested it was a synonym for “shifty.”
Early in his lecture career, Rowbotham sometimes had difficulty dealing with objections. At Trowbridge, for instance, one correspondent reported that a townsman, Mr. Stapleton, had effectively refuted Rowbotham’s arguments. However effective Stapleton’s arguments might have been, they were presumably tame compared to what Rowbotham ran into at Burnley.
As Parallax, Rowbotham scheduled two lectures on zetetic astronomy at the Working Men’s Newsroom, Burnley, for Wednesday and Friday evenings, December 5 and 7, 1849. The attendance for the first lecture was small, but the audience was lively and interested. Two listeners questioned Rowbotham closely about how, if the earth is indeed flat, the hull of a ship can disappear from view before the masts. Rowbotham

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didn’t have a satisfactory answer, and he evaded by saying the subject properly belonged to his second lecture. He promised to answer this and other hard questions after his second lecture on Friday evening. A correspondent for the Blackburn Standard described the result:
Friday evening came—the fire was comfortably lighted, and the company collected, but no ‘Parallax’ appeared!! The persons present of course concluded that he had slipped off the icy edge of his flat disc, and expect to see him again when he peeps up on the opposite edge. [ref. 1.16]
It was also in 1849 that Rowbotham published his first flat-earth work, a modest 16-page pamphlet entitled Zetetic Astronomy: A Description of Several Experiments which Prove that the Surface of the Sea Is a Perfect Plane and that the Earth Is Not a Globe! The pamphlet describes six experiments with a surveyor’s theodolite. For example:
Between the Counties of Huntingdon and Norfolk, across the Fens of Cambridgeshire, there is an artificial river called the “New Bedford;” it is upwards of 20 miles in length, nearly a straight line, and without a lock or other interruption to its continuity: nor is there a current except at the ebb tides of the German Ocean. So that if the Earth is a Globe, the water in this canal is an arc of a circle. A small boat was sent out 6 miles from the Theodolite—as represented in fig. 9, but no convexity whatever could be detected! the surface of the water was perfectly level!!
In 6 miles there should have been a fall of 24 feet from the line of sight!!!
As represented in fig. 10. [ref. 1.17]

Figures 9 and 10 from Rowbotham’s 1849 pamphlet.
To judge from the pamphlet, the arguments Rowbotham sent to the Royal Astronomical Society had borne fruit. The title page identifies Zetetic

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Astronomy as “the substance of a paper read before the Royal Astronomical Society on the evening of Dec. 8, 1848.” Broadsheets (posters) advertising Rowbotham’s lectures made the same claim. One of the broadsheets fell into the hands of mathematician Augustus De Morgan, who explored unorthodoxies of science and scholarship in a weekly column “A Budget of Paradoxes” [note 1.8] in the Athenæum magazine. As it happened, De Morgan could shed light upon what happened at the Royal Astronomical Society. Quoting Rowbotham’s claim, he commented:
No account of such a paper appears in the Notice for that month: I suspect that the above is Mr. S. Goulden’s way of representing the following occurrence: Dec. 8, 1848, the Secretary of the Astronomical Society (De Morgan by name) said, at the close of the proceedings,—“Now, gentlemen, if you will promise not to tell the Council, I will read something for your amusement:” and he then read a few of the arguments that had been transmitted by the lecturer. [ref. 1.18]
In the 1850s, Rowbotham stumped much of England, lecturing and learning. As Parallax, his platform technique was simple. Zetetic, he would explain, is from the Greek zeteo, meaning to seek or inquire. He claimed to inquire only after facts, leaving mere theories to the likes of Copernicus and Newton. He argued that the facts show the earth is flat, and the theory that it is round is untenable. Recovering from the Burnley disaster, he developed an argument which explained ships disappearing over the horizon hull first as a trick of perspective. His bottom line was always that the surface of still water is level, which he had verified himself with a series of experiments on the waters of the Old Bedford Canal.
The lectures were followed by a question and answer period, and that was where Rowbotham’s rhetorical skills shone. By the time he reached the end of a lecture, the better-educated members of his audience were itching to get at him. They were usually in for a shock. Rowbotham had a ready answer for just about any objection they could raise. Hadn’t the earth been circumnavigated? Surely, but sailing around the world is simply sailing in a circle. One can circumnavigate Britain. Is Britain a sphere? Next question.
The discussion was usually a case of the unarmed assaulting a fortress, with Rowbotham easily repelling all attacks. If a persistent questioner backed him into a dangerous position, Rowbotham would shut him off with, “Now, Sir, you have had your share of the discussion. Let someone else have a turn.” After an hour of so of this, the spherical contingent of the audience would be foaming at the mouth, and sometimes the lecturer was

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even threatened with violence. The calm, witty, and ever-courteous Rowbotham was impressive by contrast. Those who accepted his scriptural arguments were rarely impressed by any objections the opposition could throw at him, and many went away convinced that they had been deceived all their lives about the shape of the earth.
The early adventures of “Parallax” were not recorded in any detail, but reviewers for many provincial newspapers were impressed. The Liverpool Mercury, January 25, 1850, remarked that “the matter is sufficiently important to claim the attention of the scientific world.” Reviewing another lecture series, the Athlone Sentinel, May 21, 1852, noted:
The audience listened with the deepest attention, and appeared astonished at the revelations of the lecturer. At the close of each lecture several gentlemen entered the lists with “Parallax,” and a lively and interesting discussion ensued. “Parallax,” however, maintained his principles with infinite tact and ability, and answered his opponents in a masterly manner. The audiences left strongly impressed with the startling facts to which they had been listening. …
Everywhere he went, Rowbotham left behind a few converts, and by the mid-1860s, “Parallax” was a household word in England.
Rowbotham was often challenged to repeat his experiments. Sometimes, he would bluff his way out. On one occasion, he agreed to duplicate one of his Bedford Canal experiments on the Teign River. Markers were to be set up at intervals, all at a fixed height above the river, and the row of markers was to be inspected by telescope for curvature. Parallax was late, so the committee of auditors from the previous lecture set up the markers without him. When Parallax arrived, he claimed that the committee had shown bad faith by setting up the markers in his absence, was trying to swindle him, and so forth, and he left in a huff. [ref. 1.19] But it was not always necessary to evade experiments.
Let Richard A. Proctor, science writer, astronomer, and good-humored arch-enemy of Parallax, describe another experiment:
Mr. Rowbotham did a very bold thing … at Plymouth. He undertook to prove, by observations made with a telescope upon the Eddystone Lighthouse from the Hoe and from the beach, that the surface of the water is flat. From the beach, usually only the lantern can be seen. From the Hoe, the whole of the lighthouse is visible under favourable conditions. Duly on the morning appointed, Mr. Rowbotham appeared. From the Hoe a telescope was directed towards the lighthouse, which was well seen, the morning being calm and still and tolerably clear. On descending to the beach it was found that, instead of the whole lantern being visible as usual, only half could be seen—a

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circumstance doubtless due to the fact that the Air’s refractive power, which usually diminishes the dip due to the earth’s curvature by about one-sixth part, was less efficient that morning than usual. The effect of the peculiarity was manifestly unfavourable to Mr. Rowbotham’s theory. The curvature of the earth produced a greater difference than usual between the appearance of a distant object as seen from a certain low station (though still the difference fell short of that of which would be shown if there were no error). But Parallax claimed the peculiarity observable that morning as an argument in favour of his flat earth. It is manifest, he said, “that there is something wrong about the accepted theory; for it tells us that some much less of the lighthouse should be seen from the beach than from the Hoe, whereas still less was seen.” And many of the Plymouth folk went away from the Hoe that morning, and from the second lecture, in which Parallax triumphantly quoted the results of the observation, with the feeling which had been expressed seven years before in the Leicester Advertiser, that “some of the most important conclusions of modern astronomy had been seriously invalidated.” [ref. 1.20]
No one ever accused Parallax of lacking audacity. Dodges of this sort were not always necessary, however, for Rowbotham always had a favorite trick ever up his sleeve. As Proctor continued:
Another experiment conducted by Parallax the same morning was creditable to his ingenuity. Nothing better, perhaps, was ever devised to deceive people, apparently by ocular evidence, into the belief that the earth is flat—nor is there any clearer evidence of the largeness of the earth’s globe compared with our ordinary measures. On the Hoe, some ninety or a hundred feet above the sealevel, he had a mirror suspended in a vertical position facing the sea, and invited bystanders to look in that mirror at the sea-horizon. To all appearance the line of the horizon corresponded exactly with the level of the eye-pupils of the observer. Now, of course, when we look into a mirror whose surface is exactly vertical, the line of sight to the eye-pupils of our image in the mirror is exactly horizontal; whereas the line of sight from the eye to the image of the sea-horizon is depressed exactly as much as the line from the eyes to the real sea-horizon. Here, then, seemed to be proof positive that there is no depression of the sea-horizon; for the horizontal line to the image of the eye-pupil seemed to coincide exactly with the line to the image of the sea-horizon. It is not necessary to suppose here that the mirror was wrongly adjusted, though the slightest error of adjustment would affect the result either favourably or unfavourably for Parallax’s flat-earth theory. It is a matter of fact that, if the mirror were perfectly vertical, only very acute vision could detect the depression of the image of the sea-horizon below the image of the eye-pupil. The depression can easily be calculated for any given circumstances. Parallax encouraged observers to note very closely the position of the eye-pupil in the image, so that most of them approached the image within about ten inches, or the glass within about five. Now, in such a case, for a height of one hundred feet above the sea-level the image of the sea-horizon would be depressed below the image of the eye-pupil by less than three hundredths of an inch—an amount which could not be detected by one eye in a hundred. [ref. 1.21]

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Proctor goes on to describe a variation of the same experiment which would easily show the dip of the horizon—if it exists.
Rowbotham first published Earth Not a Globe in 1865. [note 1.9] The foundation work of zetetic astronomy, this 221-page book presumably contains the substance of his lectures and perhaps some additional arguments. The first major flat-earth work since Cosmas Indicopleustes, it opens with these words:
The term “zetetic” is derived from the Greek verb zeteo; which means to search or examine—to proceed only by inquiry. [ref. 1.22]
Presumably, he opened his lectures the same way. Rowbotham argued that the Copernican system is without a proven foundation. It is based on premises that are unproven and cannot be proved. Rather than grounding their system in facts, astronomers speculate and advance metaphysical theories. The zetetic method, as used in courts of law, is the only legitimate method of scientific inquiry:
Let the practice of theorising be cast aside as one fatal to the full development of truth; oppressive to the reasoning power; and in every sense inimical to the progress and permanent improvement of the human race. [ref. 1.23]
Throughout the book, Rowbotham disparages theories and theorists at every opportunity:
Whosoever creates or upholds a theory, adopts a monster which will sooner or later betray and enslave him, or make him ridiculous in the eyes of practical observers. [ref. 1.24]
And furthermore:
The very construction of a theory at all, and especially such as the Copernican, is a complete violation of that natural and legitimate mode of investigation to which the term zetetic has been applied. [ref. 1.25]
Modern philosophers consider theories the essence of science. Rowbotham’s ideas were grounded in the Scottish “Common Sense” Realism of philosopher Thomas Reid (1719–1796). Reid rejected abstract speculations and metaphysics, arguing that some things are self-evident (for example, the external world exists). Early in the 19th century, Reid’s views were popular among conservative Protestants seeking to stem the tides of astronomy and geology. Combining ideas selected from Reid and Sir Francis Bacon, they sought absolute proof in science and rejected all

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theories. [note 1.10] [ref. 1.26] Thus, Rowbotham’s attacks on theories probably were familiar to many readers.
In setting forth zetetic astronomy, Rowbotham presented arguments in favor of a flat earth and rebuttals against the common arguments for sphericity, with alternative explanations. His fundamental arguments for the flat earth were: (1) Standing still water is flat, (2) the earth does not appear convex when viewed from a balloon, (3) lighthouses are seen at distances impossible on a sphere, (4) surveyors make no correction for curvature, and (5) the earth is immobile. He supported these with experimental, observational, or documentary evidence. Rowbotham treated the following as serious arguments for sphericity: (1) Ships seem to disappear over the horizon, (2) the sea horizon appears to dip, (3) sunrise and sunset, and (4) the earth eclipses the moon. For these, he constructed alternative explanations, including the zetetic law of perspective.
The fundamental argument of zetetic astronomy is that standing still water is flat. If the earth is a globe, the surface of large bodies of water must be convex. As in his 1849 and 1851 pamphlets, Rowbotham described an experiment on the six miles of water between Welney Bridge and Welche’s Dam on the Old Bedford Canal:
The observer, with a good telescope, was seated in the water as a bather (it being the summer season), with the eye not exceeding eight inches above the surface. The flag and the boat down to the water’s edge were clearly visible throughout the whole distance! [ref. 1.27]
This was, of course, the location of Rowbotham’s former Owenite colony. He also described numerous other experiments, including the mirror experiment discussed by Proctor.
In the 1860s, the cutting edge of aerial technology was the balloon. For some reason, numerous early balloonists reported that from high altitude, the earth looks positively concave. Perhaps Elliott, an American balloonist, was first:
[T]he view of the Earth from the elevation of a balloon is that of an immense terrestrial basin, the deeper part of which is that directly under one’s feet. [ref. 1.28]
Quotations from balloonists became a mainstay of flat-earth argumentation.
Under normal viewing conditions, at least, the sphericity of the earth

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would limit the distance at which any given lighthouse could be seen. Rowbotham argued that lighthouses were frequently seen at far greater distances, and he gave numerous documented instances.
It was commonly understood that surveyors laying out railways or canals corrected their sights for the curvature of the earth. Rowbotham insisted that this was not done in practice. Furthermore, the British government tacitly acknowledged that the earth is a plane. As proof, he cited standing order No. 6 of the House of Lords, which regulated plans submitted to the government for public works:
[A] datum HORIZONTAL LINE, which shall be the same throughout the whole length of the work, or any branch thereof respectively; and shall be referred to some fixed point stated in writing on the section, near some portion of such work; and in the case of a canal, cut, navigation, turnpike, or other carriage road, or railway, near either of the termini [emphasis presumably added by Rowbotham]. [ref. 1.29]
To a flat-earther, horizontal means flat, not some uniform distance above sea level.
If the earth is a revolving globe, Rowbotham argued, the speed of its surface in England should be about 700 miles per hour. To determine if this is true, he fastened an air-gun to a post and adjusted it to true vertical with a plumb-line. [ref. 1.30]
On discharging the gun, the ball … invariably (during several trials) descended within a few inches of the gun. …. [T]wice it fell back upon the very mouth of the barrel. The average time that the ball was in the atmosphere was 16 seconds … [ref. 1.31]
Allowing half the time for the ascent and half for the descent, Rowbotham calculated that the earth should have moved 5600 feet in the meantime and the balls should have fallen more than a mile away.
A major problem for zetetic astronomy—one Rowbotham obviously hadn’t solved when he ignominiously ran away at Burnley—is why outwardbound ships seem to sink below the horizon, first the hull disappearing, then the lower sails, and so forth. Rowbotham explained this effect by the zetetic law of perspective.
Illustrators construct perspective drawings using a geometric concept called the vanishing point, the distant point upon which a group of parallel lines appears to converge. In conventional perspective, the real vanishing

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point is at infinity. In zetetic perspective, the vanishing point is the limit of visibility, which depends upon the apparent size of an object. To make this point, Rowbotham quoted a popular compendium of facts, Mayhew’s Wonders of Science:
The smallest angle under which an object which can be seen is upon average for different sights the 60th part of a degree, or one minute in space; so that when an object is removed from the eye 3000 times its own diameter, it will only just be distinguishable; consequently, the greatest distance at which we can behold an object, like a shilling, of an inch diameter is 3000 inches or 250 feet. [ref. 1.32]
Rowbotham argued that zetetic perspective explains ships apparently going “hull-down” over the curvature of the earth:
[I]f the surface of the hull be ten feet above the water it will vanish at 3,000 times 10 feet; or nearly six statute miles; but if the mast-head be 30 feet above the water, it will be visible for 90,000 feet or over 17 miles; so that it could be seen upon the horizon for a distance of eleven miles after the hull had entered the vanishing point! Hence the phenomenon of a receding ship’s hull being the first to disappear, which has been so universally quoted and relied upon as proving the rotundity of the Earth, is fairly and logically a proof of the very contrary! [ref. 1.33]
This explanation has a distinct consequence, which Rowbotham met directly: “If now a good telescope be applied the hull will be distinctly restored to sight!” [ref. 1.34] On a flat canal, the telescope will always bring the object back into view, but this is not always possible on the undulating sea because a telescope magnifies the waves:
[T]hus the phenomenon is often very strikingly observed—that while a powerful telescope will render the sails and rigging of a ship when beyond … the optical horizon, so distinct that the very ropes are easily distinguished, not the slightest portion of the hull can be seen. [ref. 1.35]
This flatly contradicts his frequent statements that a telescope invariably brings the hull back into view!
Another serious objection to zetetic astronomy is the apparent dip of the horizon. Rowbotham confronted the problem directly:
If a theodolite or spirit-level be placed upon the sea-shore, and “levelled,” and directed towards the sea, the line of the horizon will be observed to be a given amount below the cross-hair of the instrument, to which a certain dip, or inclination from the level will have to be given to bring the cross-hair and the sea horizon together. [ref. 1.36]

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This is fairly stated. The dip of the horizon is generally attributed to the sphericity of the earth. [note 1.11] According to the zetetic law of perspective, however, the horizon always should appear at eye level.
Rowbotham acknowledged that this phenomenon seems convincing, but he argued that it is actually an illusion caused by the lens system of the theodolite. He pointed out that if a convex lens is held in front of a straight line, the apparent position of the line shifts whenever the lens is the slightest bit off center. [ref. 1.37]
Sunrise and sunset seem an even greater problem. If the sun is always above a flat earth, skeptics asked, why does it appear to set? Rowbotham explained that the sun’s light at any given time falls in a circle, like a spotlight. Although the path of the sun is parallel to the earth’s surface, it appears to ascend when approaching and to descend when receding. [ref. 1.38] He used a drawing to explain how the apparent position of the sun varies with its actual position. He concluded that sunrise and sunset are a matter of zetetic perspective:
Thus “Sunrise” and “Sunset” are phenomena dependent entirely upon the fact that horizontal lines parallel to each other appear to approach or converge in the distance. … [ref. 1.39]
Both conventional and zetetic astronomy attribute solar eclipses to the moon’s passing between the sun and the observer. Lunar eclipses are another matter. Rowbotham argued that the conventional explanation, that the earth passes between the sun and moon, is impossible, for “cases are on record of the Sun and Eclipsed Moon being above the horizon together.” [ref. 1.40] (To quell doubts about the latter, he cited numerous references from conventional scientific sources.) He concluded that an unseen dark body is responsible. As for predictions of eclipses, they are simply cyclic phenomena. Ptolemy calculated all eclipses for 600 years, and the Babylonians are known to have calculated eclipses in 719 B.C. [ref. 1.41]
Rowbotham also described his vision of the known universe. Using reported observations of the sun’s angular altitude, he calculated its actual height as less than 4,000 miles. He concluded that its path is roughly circular, as explorers in the polar regions have actually observed the sun describing a circle upon the southern horizon. [ref. 1.42] Actually, he argued that the solar path is a spiral that increases and decreases in diameter, taking the sun somewhat north or south of the equator, and this

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phenomenon causes the seasons. The moon is self-luminous. Its exhibits phases because not all of its surface is luminous, and it rotates to present more or less of the luminous part to the earth.
The earth is like a great ship floating at anchor on the waters of the great deep, but volcanoes are proof that it has a fire in the hold! [ref. 1.43] Rowbotham concluded that the interior of the earth is on fire, and that under the right circumstances it could be annihilated in a conflagration. [ref. 1.44]
In the final section, which amounts to more than a fifth of the book, Rowbotham took his gloves off. He charged that the Copernican theory is completely baseless, and he challenged its advocates to show a single instance where a phenomenon is explained, a calculation made, or a conclusion advanced that does not depend upon assumption! He insisted that conventional astronomy is all assumption and fraud.
The whole system taken together constitutes a monstrous absurdity. It is false in its foundation; irregular, unfair, and illogical in its details; and its conclusions inconsistent and contradictory. Worse than all, it is a prolific source of irreligion and atheism, of which its advocates are, practically, supporters! [ref. 1.45]
Zetetic astronomy would strike at the root of atheism, which depends upon modern astronomy:
The doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity and motion is now shown to be unconditionally false; and therefore the scriptures which assert the contrary, are, in their philosophical teachings at least, literally true. In practical science therefore, atheism and denial of scriptural authority have no foundation. [ref. 1.46]
Zetetic astronomy supports the inspiration of the Bible. Some argued that the Bible was intended to teach people how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, and Rowbotham dismissed them harshly:
To say the Scriptures were not intended to teach science truthfully, is in substance to declare that God himself has stated, and commissioned his prophets to teach things which are utterly false! [ref. 1.47]
He insisted that conventional astronomy threatened the very foundations of Christianity, and he fired a barrage of scriptures. Deuteronomy 26:15, Exodus 19:20, Psalm 102:19, Isaiah 43:15, Psalm 103:11, 2 Kings 2:11, Mark 16:10, and Luke 24:51 teach that up and down are absolute, with

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heaven above the earth. Conventional astronomy holds that up and down are relative, and Rowbotham demanded:
Where is the true and unchangeable “palace of God?” In what direction is Heaven to be found? Where is the liberated human soul to find its home—its refuge from change and motion, from uncertainty and danger? Is it to wander for ever in a labyrinth of rolling worlds? [ref. 1.48]
He concluded that the belief in heaven is endangered or destroyed by astronomy. Numerous scriptures call the moon a light, not a reflector (Genesis 1:14,16; Psalm 136:7,9; Jeremiah 31:35; Ezekiel 32:7–8; Psalm 148:3; Isaiah 13:10; Matthew 24:29; Isaiah 9:19–20; Psalm 136:7 9; Job 25:5; Ecclesiastes 12:2, Isaiah 30:26; and Deuteronomy 33:14). [ref. 1.49] If the sun becomes black as sackcloth, how can the moon only get red as blood if it is merely a reflector? The fact that the moon will continue to glow when the sun is darkened proves that it shines by its own light. [ref. 1.50]
Revelation says the stars will fall on the earth. How can thousands of stars fall on earth if they are larger than the earth and millions of light-years away? [ref. 1.51] The very distances attributed to stars contradict the Bible:
[T]hey must have been shining, and must have been created at least one hundred million nine hundred thousand years ago! The chronology of the bible indicates that a period of six thousand years has not yet elapsed since “the Heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the Host of them.” [ref. 1.52]
The arguments made by skeptics against the Deluge collapse on the flat earth. [ref. 1.53] The Deluge waters would run off the earth like a wave running off the deck of a ship.
Finally, if the earth is a globe, how could Jesus be taken to a high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the world? How can every eye see him when he comes in the clouds? [ref. 1.54]
But it has been demonstrated that the Earth is a Plane and motionless, and that from a great eminence every part of its surface could be seen at once; and, at once—at the same moment, could every eye behold Him, when “coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” [ref. 1.55]
With those words, Rowbotham closed the book. Presumably, he closed his lectures on a similar note.
Earth Not a Globe is a small book, less than 50,000 words. It is organized

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into 14 sections, but the first occupies 60 pages and the last 46 pages, leaving 113 pages for the remaining 12 sections. Thus, the treatment of topics is inconsistent and the organization somewhat chaotic. One section on the sun’s path merits a single page. Zetetic perspective is dealt with in two sections, the second sometimes contradicting the first. In fact, some sections look as if Rowbotham hurriedly threw his lecture and research notes together and handed them to a printer.
If Earth Not a Globe was hurriedly published, perhaps it was rushed into print to forestall a potential rival. Early in 1865, a disciple who styled himself “Common Sense” began publishing 16-page installments of Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed. “Common Sense” was in fact William Carpenter, who in 1864 had published an 8-page pamphlet entitled Earth Not a Globe under the same pseudonym. A printer by trade and Pitman shorthand expert by avocation, he was born in Greenwich in about 1830. His present home in Greenwich was but a few hundred yards from that of the first Astronomer Royal, the estimable and irascible Reverend John Flamsteed, and his printing shop was nearby. Controversy was not unknown to William Carpenter when he adopted zeteticism.
In September 1858, Carpenter had launched The Spiritual Messenger: A Magazine Devoted to Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and Other Branches of Psychological Science. His third branch of psychological science was phrenology, and Carpenter called this holy trinity “the noblest Sciences that can engage the attention of man.” [ref. 1.56] Spiritualism was a relatively recent import to England, the modern-day versions dating from the 1848 manifestations in the bedroom of the Fox girls in Hydesville, New York. Mesmerism and phrenology, the other members of Carpenter’s trinity, were already well-established among British mystics. The new magazine of noble sciences was founded with a noble purpose:
It is intended that the ‘SPIRITUAL MESSENGER’ shall be a messenger of Truth and nothing but the Truth:—the Standard being the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to the New Testament. … In a word:—its object will be to strengthen the connecting link between Science and Religion. [ref. 1.57]
Where human nature is concerned, there is nothing new under the sun. Spiritualism is now called channeling, the spirit of phrenology lives in foot reflexology, mesmerism survives in acupuncture, and the search for Truth goes on. Thus, William Carpenter was a cross between Shirley MacLaine and Pat Robertson, part New Age mystic and part Fundamentalist. Like Robertson, he believed in the New Testament Gift of Healing, and he

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sometimes healed the sick using Mesmerism. Like MacLaine, he received messages from the dead. Then as now, most conservative Christians believed such messages come from Satan.
Carpenter vehemently disagreed. In the Spiritual Messenger, he gave six Biblical reasons for believing in spiritualism (for instance, Saul consulted the spirit of Samuel). Perhaps more important was his own experience. He was associated with a powerful medium:
I have had as many as 12 spirits—the spirits of good men and women, John Knox, William Law, and General Havelock [note 1.12] amongst the number— speak to me in the course of two hours … [ref. 1.58]
John Knox became a regular visitor, though he assured Carpenter that he hadn’t spoken to another living soul since he had been dead! Another ethereal regular was Captain Hedley Vicars, “late of the 97th Regiment.” Carpenter often used his shorthand expertise to preserve séance messages. Vicars’s appearance at a séance on Sunday evening, April 25, 1858, was so memorable that Carpenter published it verbatim under the title Communion with Ministering Spirits. (The message: Repent, for your End is near!)
Late in 1858, Carpenter lost two children in rapid succession. When the second, ten-month-old Lewis, died on November 26, the distraught father went straight to his medium friend. She asked about the sick child, but Carpenter put her off with a noncommittal answer and said he wanted to mesmerize her. She understood. Immediately after she went into her trance, she had a vision of Lewis, to the amazement and relief of his father.
Carpenter was then holding regular séances in his home, and he published the following ad in Spiritual Messenger:
SPIRIT DISCOURSES.
Mr. W. CARPENTER
Respectfully informs Spiritualists, and all who are earnestly in search of the truth, that his Spirit-Medium has kindly consented to allow the introduction of strangers to the Sunday Evening Meetings usually held at his residence, Alma Place, near Christchurch, Greenwich, and at which Spirit Discourses are delivered through her mediumship. The engagements of the evening commence at Seven o’clock, after which time no person can be admitted.
A Collection is made towards defraying the expense of printing the “Spiritual

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Messenger.”
It’s not clear how many takers he had. In any case, he folded the Spiritual Messenger after the March 1859 issue.
Carpenter was converted to flat-earthism when he attended one of Rowbotham’s lectures in 1861. In 1864 he published Earth Not a Globe, a short pamphlet mostly in verse. He produced the first installment of Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed in 1865, and the eighth and last installment appeared by mid-1866. Remaining copies of the individual pamphlets were then bound together as chapters of a 128-page book dedicated “To ‘PARALLAX,’ The Founder of Modern Zetetic Philosophy.” Carpenter also added a short introduction that included the verse from his Earth Not a Globe. The first eight lines are as follows:
Time was, they said the Earth was flat; but now they say it’s round! But strange enough, though true, it is, no PROOF has yet been found. Astronomers will tell you, if you ask them, o’er and o’er, Proofs are by no means wanting, by the dozen or the score. Copernicus has told us this, and Newton, and the rest; And people say, “These are the men who, surely, should know best!” Herschel, indeed, says in his book, “We’ll take it all for granted;” But “COMMON SENSE” says, now-a-days, that something else is wanted.
Theoretical Astronomy is entirely derivative, even though the early chapters were published before Rowbotham’s Earth Not a Globe. Carpenter had obviously absorbed the material from Rowbotham’s lectures, and he evidently had a late and possibly expanded edition of Rowbotham’s old Zetetic Astronomy pamphlet. [ref. 1.59] Besides reviewing Rowbotham’s major arguments, Carpenter lashed out at proponents of sphericity. In the first three chapters he attacked various minor writers, but then he turned his sights to bigger game. Chapters 4 and 5 attack astronomer Sir William Herschel, and Chapters 6 through 8 focus on Astronomer Royal Sir George Biddell Airy.
Like his mentor Rowbotham, Carpenter insisted that science can only be based on facts, and he disparaged theories.
Zetetic Philosophy admits of no theories, no assumptions, no suppositions, no speculations, and no anticipations; and it, therefore, has no absurdities, no contradictions, no delusions, no sophistications, and no things but facts! [ref. 1.60]
The sphericity of the earth was unproven and unprovable, he claimed. Not

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long before, everyone understood that the earth is flat, and Carpenter thought this general understanding had been perverted through fraud. He was out to set things right. Reverend Robert Main had written in Rudimentary Astronomy that inbound ships rise up over the horizon. Carpenter chided him sternly and disposed of his “delusive implication” with the following argument:
Away, now, to the sea-side: and let us look Nature full in the face! How beautiful! No sophistry furls her brow. List to her teachings: they require no “proof,” since nothing could be plainer. As we stand at her feet, where the briny waves bid us keep a respectful distance, we begin to learn the lesson that we would not dare doubt. As we look over the outstretched waters, we see the horizon, on a level with our eyes; and yonder ships are homeward-bound! Are they coming up? It does not appear so. We ascend the cliff; and we have a still more extended view. Is it further down? No! We see more ships. Are they coming up? No! The horizon is still level with our eye. We will ascend yonder light-house,—on the highest crag. Still more extended is the view! Still more ships are visible! Are they coming up? NO! This is enough. The horizon is always on a level with the eye. [ref. 1.61]
This insistence that the horizon is always level with the eye occupies Carpenter for much of the book. Of course, he avoided suggesting that one might measure the dip of the horizon. [note 1.13] Instead, he followed “Parallax” and quoted balloonists who said that from altitude the earth’s surface looks concave rather than convex. Unfortunately, this was not unanimously reported.
Between July 17, 1862 and May 26, 1866, James Glaisher made 28 balloon ascents for the British Association for the Advancement of Science. On September 5, 1862, Glaisher estimated that he and his instrument-laden balloon reached a peak altitude of 37,000 feet, [note 1.14] but he passed out from lack of oxygen at 29,000 feet! These flights caused a sensation in England, and they were widely reported. Glaisher had the temerity to state that—contrary to popular opinion—the earth below did not look concave, and Carpenter spent two pages excoriating him for this. Glaisher also thought that the earth looked “unnatural” from altitude, for which Carpenter lectured him as follows:
“Observation!” Take Counsel. If you can help yourself, be neither fool nor slave. Get wisdom, and get rid of your jokes. Abuse not your faculties, and you will retain them. Shake off the shackles of prejudice, and be free. Remember that your master’s reputation is in your keeping. Wash your hands, therefore, from all those impurities which lie about your path … [ref. 1.62]
In their Manual of Astronomy, the Reverends Joseph A. Galbraith and

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Samuel Haughton wrote that astronomers (such as themselves) had been “led to believe” certain things about the universe. Carpenter was beside himself:
“BELIEF!” Is there a more noisy thing in the world than this? Conceited, malicious, bigotted, presumptuous, tyrannical. Such is belief! This is a lamentable statement, but no less true. Proof is not required to substantiate it. [ref. 1.63]
Carpenter insisted upon proof, and he had his own ideas about what that meant. In his Lessons on General Astronomy, Dr. Robert J. Mann compared a ship sailing around the earth to a fly walking around an orange. Carpenter would have none of that. He argued that a fly can walk on a globe because God has organized its parts to allow it to do so. The same cannot be said of ships:
[B]ecause they have not been provided with anything analogous to this organization, ships cannot sail round a globular surface; therefore, it cannot be a globular surface round which they do sail; and the Earth cannot be a globe! [ref. 1.64]
In other words, if ships are not organized like flies, the earth must be flat. It’s hard to argue with zetetic logic.
Theoretical Astronomy does not describe zetetic astronomy and is almost devoid of attempts to explain the world on zetetic principles. Indeed, Carpenter flatly denied that zetetics had any obligation to do so:
[W]e repudiate at once and for ever the idea that because we promise to pull down a false system of Astronomy we are bound by any tie whatever to build up the true, whilst we pay the astronomers for the doing of it. [ref. 1.65]
Carpenter attacked opponents hammer and tongs, and he made no apology for it.
We are doing that with regard to others, which we would not that others should be doing unto us: namely, exposing folly and error, or what may be worse than either. We should not feel at all comfortable, were the shafts of ridicule or welldeserved sarcasm directed towards us; and we do not intend, if we can help it, to give any just cause for such a course of procedure. [ref. 1.66]
In Chapters 4 and 5, Carpenter turned his guns on Sir John Herschel, only son of Sir William Herschel. The elder Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and was the first to recognize double stars as gravitationally bound systems. The son became an eminent astronomer in his own right, famed

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for mapping the southern heavens. [note 1.15] In 1833, Sir John Herschel published A Treatise on Astronomy, and it was this popular book that exercised Carpenter.
Among his other sins, Herschel called the earth a heavenly body and used terms like “conceived to be” and “imagination.” He had the temerity to write about the “dip of the horizon” and describe how it could be measured. He said that ships go out of sight hull first because of the curvature of the earth. Carpenter castigated the language of imagination and denied the dip of the horizon outright. Herschel’s description of hulldown ships was more than he could bear. Comparing Herschel to Baron Munchausen, he wrote, “We cannot say, indeed, that the Treatise on Astronomy is intended to be deceptive; but it appears so, and the fault is not with us.” [ref. 1.67] Carpenter insisted that a sufficiently powerful telescope would always bring a hull-down vessel completely into view.
In 1848, Astronomer Royal George B. Airy delivered a course of six lectures to the working men of Ipswich, which were later published in a volume of 250 pages. Among other things, Airy explained how an instrument called a zenith sector is used to measure the angle of a star from vertical. He said the earth’s size can be calculated using observations taken with zenith sectors at two locations a known distance apart. Indeed, expeditions to Lapland and Peru made such measurements, and the results showed that the earth is spheroidal rather than strictly spherical. Carpenter asserted that these observations proved the earth is flat, though he neglected to provide a simple diagram showing why and how this is so. As for the poor deluded Astronomer Royal, Carpenter recommended that he study the system of “Parallax”:
[H]is system is the true. It is not within the power of man to overthrow it. It will be rejected by the coward, by the bigot, by the fool: but it must be received by—the man! [ref. 1.68]
Like Rowbotham, Carpenter ended his book with a religious appeal. He warned against attempts to harmonize conventional astronomy with the scriptures, quoting 2 Peter 3 about willful ignorance. “The fact is,” he wrote, “one or the other must be wrong—Peter or Copernicus: and he who says that both are right, proclaims himself devoid of reason.” [ref. 1.69] The final sentence of Theoretical Astronomy is 201 words long. Carpenter appealed to readers to reject theoretical astronomy and “to hold up a Philosophy which has GOD as the Author of it,—which has Nature always at hand to illustrate it,—Reason to support it,—the Bible, to agree with it,—

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and which has ‘COMMON SENSE’ to recommend it.” [ref. 1.70]
In reading Theoretical Astronomy, one’s opinion of Carpenter shifts rapidly from outspoken critic to tiresome scold to monumental pain in the posterior. His bloated and extravagant prose, filled with irrelevancies and rhetorical flourishes, must have put off all but the most dedicated readers. A certain shrillness is expected in a controversial pamphlet, but a pamphleteer is also expected to say something. Carpenter had absolutely nothing new to say about zetetic astronomy, and it is remarkable how devoid of argument his tract is. Take away the endless carping and quibbling; the straw men pulverized down to the last broken stem; the accusations of fraud; the paroxysms of italics and CAPITALS; the raging about delusion, absurdity, fallacy, speculation, whim, deception, trick, mistake, hoax, and misfortune; and nothing remains.
Nevertheless, a reviewer for the Greenwich Free Press wrote that “‘Common Sense’ argues his position in a very able manner: the highest authorities are quoted, and, to our minds, demolished like a pack of cards.” [ref. 1.71] The reviewer for the Anglican periodical Church Times was less enthusiastic, writing, “to tell the truth, we never began to despair of Scripture until we discovered that ‘Common Sense’ had taken up the cudgels in its defence.” [ref. 1.72] One measure of Carpenter’s ambiguity is that reviewers for at least two newspapers, the Family Herald (p. vii) and the Morning Advertiser of January 21, 1865, wrote that Carpenter thought the sun returns to the north under the earth. This is what happens when a crank refuses to expose himself by saying what he is really talking about. In discussing the reviews, Carpenter appealed to pity, saying that not one of the hostile reviewers tried to refute him.
Actually some “hostile reviewers” did refute flat-earth claims, if not Carpenter’s specifically. So many people took the flat-earthers seriously that two writers published replies to “Parallax.”
Early in 1868, Rowbotham visited the ancient walled town of York, 188 miles north of London. Originally settled by the prehistoric British, York became the military capital of Britain under the Romans. The emperor Hadrian visited the outpost in 120 A.D., and the emperor Severus died there and was cremated on a hill outside the town. With the coming of Christianity, York gained an archbishop, and in the 7th century it became capital of the Angle kingdom of Northumbria. Its magnificent cathedral of St. Peter (better known as York Minister) reached its present form in 1470, though portions are centuries older. A few blocks from the Minster, on

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Coney Street near the River Ouse, stands the church of St. Martin’s. The vicar of this modest edifice, Reverend Major Rider Bresher, [note 1.16] saw the advertisements for the lectures on zetetic astronomy but thought them unworthy of attention. Many of his fellow citizens thought otherwise.
Rowbotham delivered his usual course of lectures, denouncing conventional astronomy as “utterly absurd in itself, and utterly subversive to all belief in the inspiration of the Bible.” [ref. 1.73] As usual, many sincere and trusting Christians were convinced by Rowbotham’s rhetoric and adopted zetetic astronomy. The new converts and some old skeptics jousted in the York newspapers about its merits. The vicar of St. Martin’s, who knew something about both astronomy and the Bible, was appalled by the number and enthusiasm of the new zetetics. Having saved 6d by not attending Rowbotham’s lectures, Reverend Bresher now spent 3s 6d for a copy of his book. He was impressed, but not favorably. Within a few months, he produced a 173-page pamphlet entitled The Newtonian System of Astronomy: With a Reply to the Various Objections Made against It by “Parallax”.
Reverend Bresher, ever the shepherd of his flock, sought to lead his straying sheep back into the conventional fold. He wrote:
My object in publishing this pamphlet is to help my fellow-citizens who feel an interest in the matter, to form a correct estimate of the merits of this new system of astronomy …” [ref. 1.74]
In fact, he found few merits.
Bresher began by pointing out that zetetic astronomy was not as strictly Biblical as Rowbotham claimed. For example, to explain the tides, Rowbotham claimed that the surface of the earth rises and falls rhythmically. This conflicts with the frequent Biblical statements that it is immovable. Rowbotham’s ideas often reverted to the astronomy of the ancient Greeks. As its title suggests, Bresher’s book was more an explication of conventional astronomy than a refutation of zetetic astronomy. Nevertheless, he followed the order of Earth Not a Globe in discussing his points.
In his book, as in his lectures, Rowbotham claimed hull-down ships could be restored to view with a sufficiently strong telescope. Bresher consulted several members of his parish who had been to sea, and all insisted that a telescope cannot restore a hull-down vessel to view. A friend of Bresher’s, a young merchant marine officer reported otherwise:

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I have seen the top gallant masts of a ship when on deck, the sea being quite smooth, and have gone aloft, and seen her hull; I have come down, and could see nothing but her masts again; if the earth were flat, how do they account for this? [ref. 1.75]
Bresher noted that zetetic astronomy suggests that navigation should be markedly different in the southern and northern hemispheres.
Now, whether the earth is a globe, or in a form like a round table, as ‘Parallax’ asserts, it is evidently capable of being circumnavigated. But the length of a voyage around it, say on the parallel of 45° south latitude, would, on the supposition that the earth is a globe, be only 15,300 nautical miles; while on the supposition that its form is that of a round table, it would be 32,400 miles. This of course makes an immense difference to all practical navigators in the southern ocean, and if “Parallax” can establish his assertion, it will cause an entire revolution in the whole theory of navigation. [ref. 1.76]
None of his sailor friends had experienced any difficulty navigating in the southern hemisphere, and all used the conventional theory to do so. Bresher had even examined the log kept by a ship sailing in southern latitudes and satisfied himself that the length of a degree of longitude there is appropriate for a globe. [ref. 1.77]
The Bible implies that the moon is self-luminous, and that it was created to give light to the earth. To explain its phases, Rowbotham claimed that only half of the moon is luminous. Bresher neatly turned this argument back on him, pointing out that the moon’s luminous face is always turned toward the sun:
Hence it would appear that the moon shines primarily for the sun, and only secondarily for the earth. It may occasionally benefit the earth, but it is by the way. To the sun its whole illumed disc must be turned; to the earth, a part may be turned. This is strange, wonderfully strange! [ref. 1.78]
Furthermore, the part of the moon which is self-luminous varies, since the moon always shows the same face to the earth.
A substantial section of Earth Not a Globe is devoted to lighthouses that can be seen at greater distances than should be allowed by the earth’s rotundity. Rowbotham drew most of his examples from Lighthouses of the World by Alexander Findlay, and Bresher examined this work closely. He wrote:
“Parallax” gives about twenty cases of this kind, collected from a book, “Lighthouses of the World,” which contains a list of upwards of 2000

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lighthouses, and then says (page 173,) “Many other cases could be given from the same work, shewing that the practical observations of mariners, engineers, and surveyors, entirely ignore the doctrine that the earth is a globe.” [ref. 1.79]
Bresher called this a bold but unwarranted assertion. He had himself examined Findlay’s book and found therein entries for about 2000 lighthouses. As far as he could tell, Rowbotham had found and listed almost every one that seemed to be visible at too great a distance. But there was more:
Now while “Parallax” was attentively scanning the “Lighthouses of the World,” to find out some that could be seen farther than they ought to be seen, on the supposition that the earth is a globe of about 25,000 miles in circumference; he could not but find many more which cannot be seen as far as they ought to be, on the above assumption. [ref. 1.80]
Somehow Rowbotham neglected to mention these. Bresher promised that “for every instance ‘Parallax’ can quote, where the distance given is greater than the theory requires, I will quote another where it is less.” [ref. 1.81] As a down payment he listed ten lighthouses that (from the information provided) couldn’t be seen far as they should. [ref. 1.82] Bresher suspected that misprints or local peculiarities accounted for many of the apparent discrepancies. Besides, Findlay wrote that the lights used were typically powerful enough to be seen for 60 miles or more, and refraction sometimes made lighthouses visible farther than they should be. In any case, Bresher argued that a few aberrant examples (about one percent) do not negate the earth’s sphericity.
In one case, Rowbotham used erroneous data published in a popular weekly, the Illustrated London News, which gave the wrong elevation for the light, when he could have found the correct figures in his favorite reference. [ref. 1.83] Reverend Bresher discussed this in detail and wrote:
The above, I am sorry to say, is but a fair specimen of the manner in which “Parallax” conducts his “search after truth;” and I do not think it will commend itself to any right-minded man. Anything he hears or reads, which can, by any means, be twisted into an argument against the Newtonian system, he seizes with avidity; not caring to ascertain its truth or untruth, even when he has the means of doing so, at hand. [ref. 1.84]
At one of Rowbotham’s lectures in York, he described yet another version of his Bedford Canal experiment. In this version, flagstaffs 6′ high were placed in seven boats spaced a mile apart along the canal, and the observer in the first boat sighted along the top of them, finding them all in

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line. [ref. 1.85] A listener hinted that a little more evidence about the Bedford Canal might be useful. Rowbotham became irate, demanded that the listener go there himself, and meanwhile apologize for his presumption. [ref. 1.86] Having paid 3/6 for Rowbotham’s book, Bresher could sympathize with the listener. He wrote:
We have both paid our money to hear the evidence against the Newtonian system of astronomy, which ‘Parallax’ gave us to understand he could adduce. But, unless we consider the bare assertion of a nameless stranger, whose information on the subjects he discusses is neither extensive, nor accurate, and whose blunders would disgrace a 6th form boy at a good grammar school, to be evidence, ‘Parallax’ gives us none. [ref. 1.87]
Bresher stated that trigonometrical surveys had shown beyond doubt that the earth is round, citing in particular the surveys by General de Schubert in Russia and Captain A.R. Clarke in Britain. He noted that Rowbotham’s account of the Bedford Canal experiment in his York lectures was different from that in his book Earth Not a Globe. According to the book, as we saw above, a boat sailed six miles along the canal and remained visible the whole time through a telescope placed only a few inches above the water. Bresher remarked:
This certainly is strange; but since we have the names of the two gentlemen who have lately conducted the trigonometrical survey, and we have not the names of any of those who were present at the “Old Bedford;” for the present I shall be content to believe, notwithstanding “Parallax’s” reiterations to the contrary, that the earth is a globe.
Several of Bresher’s arguments show his sound understanding of conventional astronomy. The stars must be at a great distance, he argued, because their positions relative to each other don’t vary no matter where on earth they are viewed from. [ref. 1.88] Multiple star systems show that gravitation operates in deep space. [ref. 1.89] Neptune was found by calculations made with the conventional theory. [ref. 1.90] Conventional theory predicted the return of Halley’s comet with great precision. [ref. 1.91] The planets are obviously illuminated by the sun; how is this possible if the sun’s light is restricted to a small area? [ref. 1.92] The sun should be closer to England in the summer, and thus appear larger, when in fact it appears largest in December. [ref. 1.93]
Bresher was especially offended by Rowbotham’s claim that astronomy promotes atheism. Said he, “I have known a great many Newtonians, but never met with one who was not a profound believer in the existence of

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God, and in His moral government.” [ref. 1.94] He also invited readers to compare Rowbotham’s logic with Newtonian logic.
Bresher closed with a religious note, saying that man is made in the image of God, even if the earth is astronomically insignificant. [ref. 1.95] He reserved scriptural arguments for the appendix. He ended with a long quote from Kepler about those too weak to believe the Copernican system without harm to their piety.
Bresher was not the only one who considered zetetic astronomy a threat to public education. Another who took it seriously enough to respond to it was J. Dyer. In 1866, Dyer published a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Laws of Health, and Suggestions for Their Promotion. He followed this in 1870 with The Spherical Form of the Earth. A Reply to Parallax, in Letters to a Friend, a 96-page pamphlet. [ref. 1.96]
Dyer noted that most people necessarily rely on the statements of others for much of their information. Frequently, they are in no position to evaluate statements supported with specious reasoning. Philosophers might laugh at the flat-earthers, but while they laughed Rowbotham was making progress and unsophisticated listeners were being prejudiced against science. Dyer hoped that his pamphlet would help readers understand the true nature of zetetic astronomy. This was what induced him to put his thoughts on the subject in writing.
Dyer’s pamphlet is in the form of letters. A friend of his had read Rowbotham’s book and was frustrated at neither being able to refute it nor believe it. He wrote to Dyer and asked why no one had replied. Dyer first met Rowbotham in about 1858. Dyer then lived in Northampton, and he owned a lecture hall there. Rowbotham came through doing his “Parallax” lectures on zetetic astronomy, and he gave four lectures, two at the Northampton Mechanics’ Institute and two at a hall owned by Dyer. The latter was struck by the way many of Rowbotham’s listeners were impressed with his stuff, and he gave a series of lectures in reply. Until his friend inquired about it, however, he didn’t know that Rowbotham had published a book. He found that the book contained the substance of the lectures he had heard many years previously.
Dyer noted that ships approaching each other at sea see each other’s masts first, and when they part, masts last. The curvature of the earth is the only way to account for this. Regarding zetetic perspective:

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He argues this point with some apparent reason, and very speciously; so that any one not understanding the true principles of perspective, and not having studied those phenomena at sea or by the sea-shore, would be easily misled, and unable to disprove his statements. [ref. 1.97]
Dyer argued that things vanish from sight either by going behind something or by their apparent size becoming too small to be distinguished. A telescope is useless in the former case but works in the latter. Rowbotham argued that ships at sea vanish from becoming too small to be seen, and he claimed that a telescope would bring them back into view. Dyer denied this, and cited his own experience:
For the past fourteen or fifteen years I have been in the habit of spending some weeks yearly by the sea-side, and the phenomena on the waters have mostly occupied my attention, but more especially so since I first became acquainted with Parallax. I have visited several parts of the coast on the north of Wales, east of Scotland, south and east of England, and the west of France, and, wherever I have been I have witnessed the same phenomena. I may say that I have seen hundreds of vessels (sometimes several at the same time) hull-down when looked at by means of the telescope, but whose hulls I distinctly saw after elevating myself a few feet more or less. [ref. 1.98]
The latter was not as conclusive an argument against zetetic astronomy as Dyer might have wished, because Rowbotham also claimed that the hull of a vessel would sometimes disappear behind the swells. Nevertheless, the latter seems to have been a fall-back position, and Dyer quoted Rowbotham saying repeatedly that a telescope of sufficient power will bring a hull-down vessel back into view. [ref. 1.99]
Eclipses of the moon are another proof. Dyer pointed out that the whole scenario for a lunar eclipse, the rate of motion of the shadow, its position at any moment, and so forth, can be worked out mathematically using the conventional system. [ref. 1.100] He quoted Rowbotham’s examples in extenso. Dyer had not seen the works referred to, but he presumed that they contained the correct explanation. He explained how atmospheric refraction can do the trick. He noted that in every case the person quoted used the word “appeared” or “apparently” when referring to the positions of the sun and moon.
Regarding the moon, Rowbotham claimed that a sphere cannot reflect light. [ref. 1.101] Dyer pointed out that all the planets are spheres, and they reflect light. He said that the most convincing proof that the moon is not self-luminous is the shadows it casts upon itself. The lunar mountains can be seen with a good amateur’s telescope, and they cast quite long shadows

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at the terminator. Dyer had personally made extensive observations of the moon. [ref. 1.102] Among other claims, Rowbotham claimed that the light of the moon was different from the light of the sun, and that it did not react with photographic plates. Dyer scoffed:
How such a statement as this could have been made in the face of what has been done in lunar photography, and what must be well known to many thousands, I know not. I can scarcely imagine that ignorance can be pleaded here. … At the South Kensington Museum … large photographs of the moon by Mr. De la Rue, have been exhibited for several years past, and are still (December 2, 1869) on view. [ref. 1.103]
Dyer gave several quotes from Ross that refute Rowbotham, including an explicit statement by Ross when he was in 78° south that “in this latitude” a degree of longitude is “less than a quarter mile of distance.” [ref. 1.104] According to zetetic astronomy, a degree of longitude in 78° south latitude should be nearly two nautical miles. Dyer could not understand how Ross could confuse a quarter mile with two miles.
Dyer also analyzed Rowbotham’s claims about the dip of the horizon. He discussed Rowbotham’s experiment with a convex lens and scornfully dismissed it. If a theodolite’s level sight is incorrect, he noted, all of its other sights must be incorrect, too. Isn’t it remarkable, he asked, that all makers of these instruments make exactly the same error? In Rowbotham’s experiment, if the lens is centered slightly above the line, it apparently shifts the line that way. On the other hand, if center of the lens slightly below the line, the line apparently shifts down. Why does the theodolite crosshair never appear below the horizon? And why did Rowbotham merely make assertions? Why didn’t he examine a theodolite to determine the supposed error? [ref. 1.105]
Dyer described Rowbotham’s famous air-gun experiment, quoting his account of it at length. [ref. 1.106] As it happened, he was well-prepared to shed some light on this experiment. He wrote:
The account of the air-gun experiment is not correct in its most essential part. During his stay at Northampton, Parallax gave four lectures—two in the hall of the Mechanics’ Institute, and two in Milton Hall, then belonging to me. In one of the lectures delivered in the latter place, he stated that “if bullets were propelled from an air-gun, fixed perpendicularly to a post or other suitable object, they would return to the barrel of the gun again.” [ref. 1.107]
Dyer owned an air-gun, and at the end of the lecture, he publicly challenged Rowbotham to make the experiment, offering him five shillings

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for every ball of twenty that fell back into the barrel. Rowbotham could hardly refuse, and a committee was selected from the audience to observe the experiment and make a report at the next lecture. Dyer continued:
The experiment was carried out on a piece of land at the back of my house. The twenty bullets were propelled from the gun, but in place of “invariably descending within a few inches of the gun,” or “back to the place of their detachment,” as stated by Parallax, they fell in all directions, and from ten to twenty feet from the gun.
* * *
You can therefore fancy my surprise and astonishment when I saw it stated in his book that “the balls invariably descended within a few inches of the gun,” and also “back to the place of detachment.” He likewise states that “twice it fell upon the very mouth of the barrel.” Not two of the twenty balls that were propelled from the gun and formed part of the experiment. [ref. 1.108]
Two balls did strike the barrel, however, after the experiment. When Dyer was letting the remaining air out of the gun, Rowbotham brought him two balls and asked him to try them again. There was barely enough air pressure to pop them out of the barrel, and they rose a few inches and fell back onto the muzzle! [ref. 1.109]
Dyer noted that a southern Parallax would claim the sun circles the south pole, as it appears to do from the Antarctic circle. He pointed out that Ross, one of Rowbotham’s favorite sources, reported seeing the sun two degrees above the southern horizon at midnight on January 22, 1841 from latitude 74° 15′ S. On another occasion, Ross observed the sun with a sextant at 28 minutes after midnight, determining his latitude to be 77° 56′ S. How, Dyer wondered, did Rowbotham miss these observations? [ref. 1.110]
Dyer had much to say regarding sunset over the zetetic plane. He noted that sunset strains the zetetic law of perspective. Rowbotham claimed the sun’s altitude is about 4000 miles and the stars perhaps 6000 miles. All points on earth more than 6250 miles from the point directly below the sun are in darkness. Thus, for every mile the sun moves horizontally, it must apparently sink two-thirds of a mile vertically. [ref. 1.111] The stars, being higher, must sink at virtually a one-to-one rate. Dyer commented:
Why perspective should appear to lower the sun two feet for every three passed over, and the stars and planets one foot for every foot passed over, I cannot say. Is it that there is one kind of perspective for the sun and another for the stars? [ref. 1.112]

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Rowbotham claimed that the principle of perspective is modified for luminous bodies, but Dyer insisted that it is not, and he suggested an experiment with a candle to demonstrate this.
Regarding Rowbotham’s claim that navigators fail to sail completely around the Antarctic circle, Dyer says Rowbotham’s version of the accounts he quotes is a tissue of error. [ref. 1.113] The only difficulty in navigating extreme southern waters is the tremendous amount of ice encountered. Rowbotham quoted Ross as saying that when navigating in southern latitudes he frequently found himself in advance of his reckoning, but he neglected to mention that Ross specifically attributed this to strong currents.
Addressing the friend to whom the letters were written, Dyer ended his pamphlet with the following words:
I have now examined every question of any scientific importance in the book entitled “Earth Not a Globe;” and in doing so, my patience has often been sorely tried. The great number of dogmatic assertions, the incorrect statements, the suppression of facts, and the misrepresentations found in its pages, have more than once tempted me to throw the book into the fire, as undeserving of a serious reply. If, however, the reading of what has been written shall have the effect of removing the uneasiness of your mind, caused by the book in question, my object will be accomplished, and I shall not have laboured in vain. [ref. 1.114]
Dyer labored in vain. When The Spherical Form of the Earth was published in 1870, flat-earthism had already spread throughout the British Isles. And that same year a new champion arose who brought zeteticism more attention than it ever got before.

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EE--bbooookkss

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Chapter 2: Hampden and the Old Bedford Canal
On March 5, 1870, a small grim-faced party, principals and seconds, met
near the end of the Old Bedford Canal, 80 miles north of London. There was no possibility of reconciliation; gleaming instruments were removed from felt-lined cases, and they proceeded to the task at hand. One principal was Alfred Russel Wallace, the renowned naturalist who shared with Darwin the discovery of evolution by natural selection; the other was John Hampden. Their purpose was not to fight a duel, but to settle a £500 bet about the shape of the earth. Hampden swore roundly that the earth is flat; Wallace said flatly that it is round. [ref. 2.1] Each confidently expected to pluck a £500 pigeon. [note 2.1]

On this historic Saturday morning, the flat-earth movement was hardly yet a movement, despite two decades of public lectures by “Parallax.” Most respectable Britons had managed to ignore the flat-earthers, although Augustus De Morgan had satirized the zetetics in his “Budget of Paradoxes” column in the Athenæum magazine, and provincial newspapers reviewed lectures by “Parallax,” sometimes favorably. While “Parallax” undoubtedly had many converts in the provinces, only two were real activists. William Carpenter, whom we met in the last chapter, had written his “Common Sense” works a few years previously. John Hampden had just appeared on the scene. The flat-earth movement badly needed two things, public exposure and a rallying cry to unify the scattered faithful. The Bedford Canal experiment would provide both for the next thirty years.

John Hampden, history’s most colorful zetetic, was born in 1819 or 1820. His father, Reverend John Hampden, a Church of England clergyman, was related to a powerful churchman, Bishop Renn Dickson Hampden. When young John was ten years old, his father was made rector of Hinton Martel in Dorset, where he wrote a strange commentary on the prophecies of Daniel. At age 19, young John left Dorset to attend St. Mary Hall of Oxford University, matriculating on February 14, 1839. He apparently dropped out without graduating. He didn’t really need a university education. A gentleman of comfortable means, he could devote himself to whatever pursuits interested him. [ref. 2.2]

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Whatever adventures John Hampden had during the 30 years after he entered Oxford are lost to history. He married and fathered children—at least a son and a daughter—but his writings contain few hints of his other activities. Somewhere, perhaps from his father, he acquired a literalist view of the Bible. In mid-19th century England, many orthodox Christians perceived the recently established uniformitarian geology and the newfangled theory of evolution by natural selection as assaults on the Bible. Hampden was one of these.
Hampden lived in Swindon, 77¼ miles west of London station on the Great Western Railway. Bristol lies about 30 miles to the west and, swinging an arc counterclockwise, Bath, Trowbridge, and (due south) the ancient Stonehenge monument. Situated on a hill overlooking White Horse Vale and the chalk uplands of Marlborough, Old Swindon was a market town with a church, a market hall, a town hall, and a corn exchange. New Swindon was a child of the railroad, a major junction point for western England and site of a locomotive works and railway car factory. Together, Old and New Swindon comprised a grubby but bustling town of about 20,000.
In 1869, Hampden chanced upon a copy of Rowbotham’s Earth Not a Globe. He thought it an able refutation of Copernicus and Newton. The Bible says the earth has foundations, and here was proof. The earth isn’t a ball, spinning giddily through space, but is a flat, immovable plane, with the north pole at the center and no south pole. The sun is small, and circles above the earth at a comfortably close distance. When Joshua ordered the sun to stand still, it halted until he let it move again. All the supposed proofs of the earth’s rotundity—eclipses, sunset, ships apparently disappearing over the horizon—were explained away. Hampden was converted at the first reading.
The excited convert rushed forth to reshape the world. Discovering Carpenter’s “Common Sense” works, he wrote to the author and arranged to buy up the remaining stock of Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed, and also the copyright, for which he paid £100. [ref. 2.3] He also sought out “Parallax” (Rowbotham) and got permission to publish a pamphlet of extracts from Earth Not a Globe. This pamphlet, entitled The Popularity of Error, and the Unpopularity of Truth, was apparently Hampden’s first publication. It is a curious mixture, with Hampden sometimes speaking for himself and sometimes presenting extracts from “Parallax.”

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In one respect, Hampden’s pamphlet broke new ground. Rowbotham (as “Parallax”) and Carpenter (as “Common Sense”) were generally circumspect in their language. Not Hampden! He lambasted Newtonian astronomy:
But I have not the patience to “answer fools according to their folly,” or I might proceed to expose the absurdity of every theory which has been devised to bolster up this preposterous system of Sir Isaac Newton and his predecessor, Copernicus, endorsed and accepted by men wise in their own conceits, but sheer infidels when brought to the test of Scripture. The Word of the living God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, does not give the slightest shadow of authority in support of such a notion. [ref. 2.4]
The crux of the matter for Hampden was astronomy’s inconsistency with a literal reading of the Bible. Especially glaring was the alleged motion of the earth around the sun:
Both Isaiah, Job, Solomon, and David, in all their references to the Sun and to the Earth, speak of the motion of the one and the immobility of the other. So does every writer, from Moses to John of Patmos. Dare we, then, venture to accuse these inspired historians of ignorance, or rather of making statements directly contrary to the evidence of their senses? No! May our united answer be, “Let God be true, and every man a liar” who speaks not according to His word. [ref. 2.5]
Furthermore, the scriptural problems extended beyond mere astronomy. Hampden was convinced, for instance, that the universal Deluge recorded in Genesis, with its rains falling from the windows of heaven, could not have occurred on a spherical earth:
If the Earth be indeed a globe, then the whole history of the flood is palpably imperfect and untrue. Unless the Earth were a Plane, Moses invented all the particulars connected with that event, from the beginning to the end. [ref. 2.6]
Sharp language, contempt for conventional science, and a fierce Biblical literalism would be hallmarks of Hampden’s writing throughout his long public career. Hampden was not one to sit still for nonsense.
While he saw the value of Rowbotham’s writings and “Parallax” lectures, with their subtle jibes at scientists, Hampden saw that the scientific world was ignoring Rowbotham. To confront scientific orthodoxy in a more direct fashion, he placed the following advertisement in the January 12, 1870 issue of Scientific Opinion:
The undersigned is willing to deposit from £50. to £500., on reciprocal terms, and defies all the philosophers, divines and scientific professors in the United

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Kingdom to prove the rotundity and revolution of the world from Scripture, from reason, or from fact. He will acknowledge that he has forfeited his deposit, if his opponent can exhibit, to the satisfaction of any intelligent referee, a convex railway, river, canal, or lake.
J H
Wallace accepted the challenge.
Alfred Russel Wallace knew the world is round, for his studies of plants and animals had carried him round the world. From 1848 to 1852, he had traveled in the Amazon jungle of South America, exploring and collecting plant and animal specimens. On the voyage home, his ship sank, and Wallace’s priceless specimens went to permanent storage in Davy Jones’s Locker. (Fortunately, he had sent some material ahead.) Wallace remained in England barely long enough to publish Travels in the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853). During 1854 to 1862, he traveled in the Malay Archipelago, observing and collecting plants and animals. His discoveries led him to formulate a theory of evolution by natural selection, and in 1858 he sent a paper describing his theory to Charles Darwin, who had been working on the same idea for 20 years. Wallace’s paper and another by Darwin were read before the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858, and Darwin, forced into action, finally published his Origin of Species the next year. When Wallace returned to England again in 1862, this time with his collections intact, he found himself famous.
By the time Hampden issued his challenge, Wallace had long settled into a more normal life. In 1866, he had married 20-year-old Annie Mitten, daughter of botanist William Mitten, and they now had two children. He had sold most of his Malaysian specimens and invested the money, and his financial situation looked secure. He was 47, president of the Entomological Society, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, recipient of the Royal Medal (1868), and otherwise covered with scientific honors— not bad for a self-educated former land surveyor in a class-conscious society.
Besides his scientific interests, Wallace was a socialist, spiritualist, and freelance do-gooder. The latter quality led him into the wager. The flatearth movement offended Wallace’s missionary instincts. He saw Hampden’s challenge as an opportunity to spike the flat-earth nonsense and, just incidentally, improve his bank balance. He wrote to Sir Charles Lyell, father of modern geology, for advice on the matter. On receiving a favorable reply, he wrote to Hampden and accepted the challenge.

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Wallace and Hampden made the arrangements for the experiment by correspondence. Their goals, motives, and methods differed radically from the beginning. Wallace wanted to spare Hampden public embarrassment, so he suggested a simple private demonstration. Hampden wanted to publicly humiliate Wallace, and he refused vehemently. Wallace suggested Bala Lake, in Wales, as an experimental site. Hampden, however, was taking no chances. In Earth Not a Globe, Rowbotham claimed he had performed experiments at the Old Bedford Canal which proved its surface flat, so Hampden recommended the canal to Wallace as a suitable place for the experiment. As stakeholder and referee, Wallace suggested a man known to him only by his reputation for scrupulous fairness, John Henry Walsh, editor of the weekly country gentlemen’s paper, The Field. Hampden agreed, but then he wrote to Wallace and asked to appoint a second referee. Wallace replied:
Your wish to have a second referee is quite reasonable, and I accede to it at once, only stipulating that he shall not be a personal acquaintance of your own, and shall be a man in some public position as Editor, Author, Engineer, etc. [ref. 2.7]
Hampden appointed one William Carpenter, journeyman printer and author!
Wallace saw his mission clearly. He would make a simple demonstration, collect the money, and leave the flat-earth movement in shambles. Old Bedford Canal it would be. Between Old Bedford Bridge [note 2.2] and Welney Bridge, a 6-mile stretch of the canal ran straight and unobstructed. It suited his purpose perfectly. He described his proposal as follows:
The test I am going to use is very simple and conclusive. I have prepared halfa-dozen signal posts each six feet long and with red and black circles attached to them, so as to be distinctly seen at a long distance. I shall set these up a mile apart on the water’s edge, and then look along them with a powerful telescope. If the water is straight and flat, the tops of these poles will of course be straight and flat, too … [ref. 2.8]
Even allowing for atmospheric refraction, the center marker should appear elevated about 5 feet above the line of sight from bridge to bridge. Nothing, it seemed, could be simpler.
Hampden was even more confident. Rowbotham’s works described several experiments similar to what Wallace proposed, some of them conducted on the very same stretch of the Old Bedford Canal. Rowbotham

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claimed none of them detected any curvature in the waters of the canal. It was all cut and dried. Carpenter would observe Wallace’s humiliation and bring back the money. Hampden himself would skip the experiment.

The final agreement for the wager differed slightly from Hampden’s original challenge, so it was put into writing and signed by both parties:

The undersigned having each deposited the sum of £500. in Messrs. Coutts’ Bank, do hereby agree, that if Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, on or before the 15th day of March, 1870, proves the convexity or curvature, to and fro, of the surface of any canal, river, or lake, by actual demonstration and measurement, to the satisfaction of Mr. John Henry Walsh, of 346, Strand, London, and Mr. William Carpenter, of 7, Carlton Terrace, Thornford Road, Lewisham Park, London, (or, if they differ, to the satisfaction of the umpire they may appoint) the said Alfred R. Wallace is to receive the above-mentioned two sums amounting to £1000., by cheques drawn by Mr. John Henry Walsh to his and the said Alfred R. Wallace’s order;—and if the said Alfred R. Wallace fails to show actual proof of the convexity of any canal, river, or lake, the above-mentioned sums are to be paid in like manner to Mr. John Hampden. Provided always that if no decision can be arrived at, owing to the death of either of the parties the wager is to be annulled, or if owing to the weather being so bad as to prevent a man being distinctly seen by a good telescope at a distance of four miles then a further period of one month is to be allowed for the experiment or longer as may be agreed upon by the referees. [ref. 2.9]

Eventually all was ready. At 5:00 p.m. Monday, February 28, Carpenter met Wallace at London’s Bishopsgate train station for the three-hour journey to Downham Market, near the Old Bedford Canal. That morning, Carpenter had received a note from Hampden confirming his decision not to attend personally:

My Dear Sir,—As I am not disposed to travel so far, my printer, Mr. Bull, of Swindon, who is thoroughly with us, will attend for me. It will I think be satisfactory to you to have some one to consult with and second any suggestions you may wish to make. He is an exceedingly shrewd and clever little man, with heart and soul in the subject. You will feel more confidence with him to refer to or consult with, otherwise you will be alone. I do not know how many Mr. W. may bring. Do not let them make it a drawn battle, which they may try and do.

J. H

[ref. 2.10]

Alfred Bull was not at Bishopsgate station, so Wallace and Carpenter journeyed together. Upon arriving in Downham Market, Carpenter took a room at the widow Howe’s boarding house, and Wallace checked into the Crown Hotel. Over dinner that evening, the two men discovered that they were both spiritualists.

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On Tuesday morning, Carpenter and Wallace rode the 2½ miles from Downham Market to the Old Bedford Bridge with five signal posts, a hatchet, and two assistants. Each signal post was a long pole bearing two red disks with a black one between them. The weather was appropriate for March 1—cold, grey, and damp. Welney Bridge was not to be seen from Old Bedford Bridge on this day. They set out on foot along the canal, placing a marker in the edge of the water every mile, with the center of the upper red disk 6 feet above the surface. Lacking a surveyor’s chain, they paced off the distance as best they could. Clumps of willows on the edge of the canal threatened to obstruct their view, and they disposed of these with the hatchet. A bitter March wind blew directly into their faces. Numerous drainage ditches emptied into the canal, obstructing their way, and Wallace fell into one of them. When the shivering party finally got back to the Crown Hotel, Carpenter found a note waiting; Hampden had changed his mind and would come. Later that evening, Walsh arrived.
Hampden joined them on Wednesday morning, having arrived the previous evening and spent the night at a tradesman’s house. The party was now complete, and they departed for Welney Bridge. With them in the vehicle was a large astronomical telescope Wallace had borrowed in Brighton. On the way, Carpenter pointed out to Walsh the Old Bedford Bridge and two wooden disks Wallace nailed to it the previous day.
When they arrived at Welney, they found three barges moored in the canal near Welney Bridge. Wallace set up his telescope on one them, while a score of Welney residents collected on the bridge to watch the proceedings. Among his other talents, Carpenter was an expert in Pitman shorthand, and he recorded dialogue along with details of the proceedings:
Carpenter: Where is your level?
Wallace: I’ve got a level, that’s all right. [ref. 2.11]
Wallace and Walsh looked through the telescope at the line of markers. With four men waltzing around on it, the barge kept shifting position at its moorings and had to be repositioned. Carpenter was constantly underfoot, and several times bumped the tripod so that everything had to be realigned. Pressed into service to hold a tripod leg in place, he kept letting go at inopportune times. Wallace and Walsh were both satisfied with the view through the telescope, but Carpenter thought they gave conflicting reports. He was very upset because the telescope was not level.
Carpenter: It’s no use taking observations, Mr. Wallace, with a telescope not

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having cross-hairs.
Wallace: Aha! We’ve nothing whatever to do with cross-hairs, Mr. Carpenter!
Carpenter: I beg your pardon, Mr. Wallace: you will find that you can do nothing without. [ref. 2.12]
Finally, it was Carpenter’s turn to look through the telescope. He recorded the following information:
Of five six-feet signals, surely enough, two only can be seen, each with its two red and one black circular discs, by the water’s edge; and whether they are the first and second, or first and third, is very doubtful. Two red discs appear high up in a line with the centre of the white toll-board on the bridge: but what are they? All the five signal-posts which we erected were six feet above the surface of the water, and the bottom of this white board is seven feet above it! [ref. 2.13]
Of course, the curvature of the earth would make the center markers appear on a level with the distant toll-board, but Carpenter would hear nothing of that. Besides, he had another explanation.
Hampden sat passively on the next barge and watched. Eventually, all agreed that the demonstration was inconclusive. Hampden and the telescope rode back to Downham Market. Carpenter, Wallace, and Walsh walked back to Old Bedford Bridge so that Walsh could see for himself the placement of the markers.
They found that at least one signal had been knocked down and replaced— at the wrong height. Others apparently were obscured by objects near the shore. Wallace decided higher markers were necessary. Indeed, a marker at each end and one in the middle would serve the purpose. Carpenter insisted that valid observations could only be made with a surveyor’s level, so Wallace agreed to borrow one to mollify him.
Walsh had to return to London the next day to finish work on Saturday’s issue of The Field, so Martin W. B. Coulcher, a local surgeon and amateur astronomer, was appointed substitute referee. Wallace sent a man on horseback to measure the height of the parapet of Welney Bridge above the water; he reported 13 feet 3 inches. Carpenter handed Wallace his notebook and asked him to make a sketch in it showing exactly what he intended to demonstrate this time. Wallace obliged, grudgingly, Carpenter thought. During the course of the evening, Carpenter noted that he was inclined to the flat opinion. Relations were a bit strained after that, and conversation did not flow easily.

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On Thursday morning, Wallace set out for King’s Lynn, a marketing and seaport town at the mouth of the canal about ten miles north of Downham Market, where he hoped to borrow a surveyor’s level. Carpenter and Hampden went along for the ride. While the two flat-earthers amused themselves examining ornithological specimens at the King’s Lynn Athenæum, Wallace located a surveyor who would loan him a Troughton’s level, a fine instrument made by Stanley of Holborn.
Friday was foggy, useless for their purpose, but Saturday dawned a fine day. The little party met briefly and then split up. Hampden and Coulcher went directly to Welney Bridge with the instruments. Carpenter and Wallace headed for the nearby Bedford Bridge. Wallace had made up two white calico banners, 3 feet deep and 6 feet wide, with a black horizontal stripe in the middle. He affixed one of these to the bridge with its center 13 feet 4 inches above the water, a height selected to agree with the optical axis of a telescope placed on the parapet of Welney Bridge. They walked the three miles to the center station, the wind at their backs and the sun warm on their faces.
At the center station, Wallace produced a gimlet (a T-shaped hand-drill used like a corkscrew) and a screwdriver from his pocket. With these, he spliced together two of the old signal poles, leaving the two red disks at the top, 4 feet apart. He erected the pole in the canal with the upper disk, like the banner on the bridge, positioned so its center was 13 feet 4 inches above the water. It was nearly 1:00 p.m. when they joined Hampden and Coulcher on Welney Bridge, and where a small crowd was in attendance.
Wallace immediately set up the astronomical telescope on the parapet of Welney Bridge. Focusing it on Old Bedford Bridge, he took a quick look. The center disk showed well above the banner. Coulcher looked, too, and as he did so, Carpenter noted a copy of the Astronomical Register protruding from the breast pocket of his coat.
They asked Carpenter to look through the telescope and note that the central marker appeared higher than the banner on Old Bedford Bridge. Coulcher made a sketch, and he asked Carpenter to sign it, verifying its accuracy. Carpenter complied, but he noted on the sketch that he considered this observation useless for their purpose, as the large telescope could not be leveled.
Meanwhile, Carpenter had personally fetched the Troughton’s level from the carriage and helped Wallace set it up. The former surveyor carefully

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centered the leveling bubble and focused the instrument on the distant bridge. Carpenter looked through it and actually jumped for joy.
Wallace: Well, then, it can be decided at once.
Carpenter: Not so!
Wallace: Well, then, fetch the parson of the parish.
Carpenter [at the Troughton’s level]: O dear, no! Mr. Wallace, look through this telescope! This is beautiful! beautiful:—as level as possible!—All three objects in a line! There’s the bridge, the centre signal, and the horizontal crosshair, in a regular …
Wallace: We’ve nothing to do with the crosshair! The position of the eye settles that point: the telescope is the same height above the water as the signal and the bridge, and you can’t move your eye to alter its position more than an eighth of an inch! Send for the parson of the parish: he’ll settle it.
In a cold fury, Wallace began packing up the Troughton’s level, and one of the locals was heard to remark:
Oi say, Bill, they want to say the water ain’t level. Oi know it is, though. Oi’ve been ’ere these ten years, and Oi know if ’t ain’t level there’s no level anywhere.
Carpenter insisted on having the Troughton’s level set up again. He made his own rough sketch and showed it to Coulcher, saying:
Please observe the equal distances which appear between the three points—the crosshair, the three-mile signal, and the distant bridge. Will you subscribe your name to my sketch under the words I have written—‘This is correct.’?
Coulcher signed. As far as Carpenter was concerned, it was all settled. The equal apparent distances between the crosshair, the center signal, and the distant bridge proved that the three points lay in a straight line!
Wallace was flabbergasted and frustrated. He had done precisely what he set out to do! The center marker was, by Carpenter’s own sketch, well above the line of sight from the parapet of Welney Bridge to the banner on Old Bedford Bridge! But Carpenter couldn’t or wouldn’t understand its significance, and Hampden flatly refused to look through the telescope. While the great naturalist alternately spluttered to himself or appealed to the crowd, Carpenter and Dr. Coulcher reviewed their sketches.
Eventually, the little party packed the gear in the coach and headed back to Old Bedford Bridge. Hampden played coachman, saying that he would get

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up from the best dinner in the world for the chance to drive a pair of handsome horses five miles. [note 2.3] No one else enjoyed the ride.
Arriving at Old Bedford Bridge, the experimental party repeated the observations, with essentially the same results. Viewed through the large telescope, the central marker appeared above the parapet of Welney Bridge. The Troughton’s level showed the marker below the crosshair and the parapet below the marker. Again, Carpenter and Coulcher signed each other’s diagrams to certify their accuracy. Again, the referees could not agree upon the significance of what they saw. They retired to the Crown Hotel, mostly in silence. There, Hampden accosted Wallace and demanded that he admit he had lost. Wallace did not reply.
On Sunday evening, Carpenter and Hampden met with Wallace and Coulcher to discuss the events of the previous day. Wallace was more communicative, but he was obviously not in a good mood, and his nerves were on edge.
Wallace: I can’t think what this ticking is. I’ve heard it all day long—just like a death-watch! there: don’t you hear it?—at perfectly regular intervals—tick, tick, tick! [ref. 2.14]
When they listened, they all heard it. Coulcher suggested it was the stove, but Carpenter, ever the spiritualist, was convinced that the sound was a psychic phenomenon brought on by Wallace’s guilt. Nothing was settled that evening, but Carpenter and Coulcher agreed to meet again on Monday morning.
Martin W. B. Coulcher lived and practiced surgery in an old-fashioned house just east of Downham Market, on the road to Stowe. When Carpenter arrived on Monday morning, Coulcher got right to the point. Wallace had won, he said, and because he and Carpenter couldn’t agree, they must (according to the terms of the wager agreement) appoint an umpire to decide the matter. Carpenter insisted that they could agree.
In truth, there was nothing they agreed on. Coulcher produced a sketch showing how Wallace had won, and he demanded that Carpenter sign it. Carpenter refused. Coulcher affirmed on his oath that Wallace won and tried to excuse himself to attend to his patients. Carpenter refused to leave, so Coulcher sent his servant to fetch a constable to show Carpenter out. Carpenter insisted that Coulcher sign a statement saying that Hampden won. Coulcher refused. Finally, the constable arrived and told Carpenter, “Go! or I’ll take you!” The constable gave Carpenter a helpful

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shove across Coulcher’s threshold, and the interview ended.
Nothing further could be accomplished at Downham Market. Hampden and Carpenter returned together to London. At a stop along the way, Carpenter bought a copy of the latest Field and found in it a note by Walsh saying that the experiment was in progress. Wallace rode in another carriage of the same train. They encountered each other at the Bishopsgate station, and Wallace was less than friendly.
Carpenter was not about to lose control of the situation by appointing an umpire to act in his stead. He wrote a letter to Wallace, beginning as follows:
Sir: Since Mr. Coulcher, the referee on your part, obstinately refuses to attempt to show me in what way you prove that which you say you have proved, I beg leave to request that you appoint some gentleman—I care not whom—to wait upon me at my residence, and to do that which Mr. Coulcher refuses to do: thus acting as referee in his stead. [ref. 2.15]
Wallace was beginning to understand. In a letter to Carpenter dated March 8, he wrote:
Sir, In reply to your extraordinary demand, I beg to say that Mr. Coulcher was quite right in not attempting to show you anything or to convince you of anything: that was not his duty. I showed you the experiment I undertook to show, and if you require any other person to explain to you what it means and how it proves my case, that only demonstrates your utter incapacity to perform the duty you have undertaken. I positively decline to appoint any other referee. The agreement gives me no power to do so, whereas it does distinctly state, that if the Referees differ, an umpire is to be appointed by them. By refusing to appoint an Umpire with Mr. Coulcher or even to discuss the subject with him, you have put yourself entirely in the wrong, and broken the terms of the agreement. I shall therefore take the customary steps to have an umpire appointed, and to him you can explain your views in whatever way you see fit. Yours truly, Alfred R. Wallace. [ref. 2.16]
Carpenter responded on March 9, writing in part:
Do just what you think is best in the matter; but pray take my word for it that I will never consent to sign away my right to see justice done to Mr. John Hampden. [ref. 2.17]
As it happened, Carpenter’s consent was not required. The previous day, Hampden had written to Wallace suggesting that Walsh be appointed umpire. Walsh would review the reports and sketches made by the two referees and settle the matter. Wallace eagerly seconded this suggestion.

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Thus, Carpenter found himself on the outside looking in, while the editor of the Field again found himself in the middle.
John Henry Walsh was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons before he abandoned surgery to write about his true love—the sporting life. Now he was 59 years old, editor of England’s leading sporting paper, and author of several highly successful books written under the pseudonym “Stonehenge,” including The Shot-Gun and Sporting Rifle (1859), The Dog in Health and Disease (1859), The Horse in the Stable and in the Field (1861), and Dogs of the British Isles (1867). A respected member of the British sporting set, he had held the stakes for many wagers. None had caused him so much trouble.
Carpenter had little choice but to submit his sketches and a written report to Walsh. Coulcher did likewise, presumably more willingly. The sketches were reproduced as copper-plate engravings and the written reports set in type for publication in the Field. Carpenter’s report repeated and amplified his claim made at the canal. Referring to the view through the Troughton’s level, he wrote:
The stations appeared, to all intents and purposes, equi-distant in the field of view, and also in a regular series: first, the distant bridge; secondly, the central signal; and, thirdly, the horizontal cross-hair marking the point of observation; showing that the central disc 13ft. 4in. high does not depart from a straight line taken from end to end of the six miles in any way whatever, either laterally or vertically. For, if so, and (as in the case of the disc 9ft. 4in. high) if it were lower or nearer the water, it would appear, as that disc does, nearer to the distant bridge. If it were higher, it would appear in the opposite direction nearer the horizontal cross-hair which marks the point of observation. As the disc 4ft. lower appears near to the distant bridge, so a disc to be really 5ft. higher would have to appear still nearer to the horizontal cross-hair of the telescope.
And therefore it is shown that a straight line from one point to the other passes through the central point in its course, and that a curved surface of water has not been demonstrated. [ref. 2.18]
In case this argument wasn’t accepted on its merits, Carpenter included a list of thirteen objections to the claim that Wallace had proved the curvature of the earth, as required in the written agreement. The first three were as follows:
1. If it be decided that the curvature is proved in consequence of experiments that will not stand strict investigation or repetition, it would be unwise.
2. If it be decided that the curvature is proved because at first sight it would appear to be so, it would be jumping to a conclusion.

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3. If it be decided that the curvature is proved because the objects at three and six miles were not coincident with the cross-hair, since surveyors know that, with one of their ordinary levelling instruments, they could not be expected to be so, it would be unfair. [ref. 2.19]
The third objection was as remarkable as it was damning. Here the man who vehemently insisted on a telescope which could be leveled—who still insisted on the importance of the crosshair—was arguing that the appearance of the markers below the crosshair was irrelevant because the instrument couldn’t really be leveled!
The packet of papers Carpenter sent to Walsh was also notable for an omission. At the Crown Hotel on the evening of March 2, Carpenter had insisted that Wallace sketch for him exactly what he intended to demonstrate, and Wallace had complied. This sketch was not in the packet, and it’s tempting to guess why.
No doubt Walsh conscientiously studied the sketches and written reports submitted to him by Carpenter and Coulcher, although a glance at either set of sketches was sufficient. At Hampden’s request, he also consulted an optician at the London firm of Solomons. Walsh wrote to both sides that he would announce his decision at one o’clock on March 18.
Carpenter arrived at Walsh’s office promptly at the appointed time. Wallace was already there. Walsh immediately told them that he had no difficulty in reaching a decision in favor of Wallace. One suspects that Walsh also said a few other things to Carpenter, judging from his comments in the March 26, 1870, issue of The Field:
[B]oth Mr. Hampden and Mr. Carpenter assented to the details of this experiment in our presence as conclusive, although we regret to say that Mr. Carpenter alleged his opinion was founded upon theory alone, and that it had never, as far as he knew, been tried. Now, the fact really is, that in a little treatise published by “Parallax,” and which we have now in our possession, with Mr. Carpenter’s name on the title-page, in his own handwriting, an experiment similar in its nature is described as having been made on the very same piece of water as that on which we were then occupied, with a result exactly the reverse of that which recently occurred. Mr. Carpenter was, in fact, engaged to decide a disputed question, of which he and his principal professed to be practically ignorant, although it was in print on the authority of the head of their sect, that it had already been tried in the same locality; and this must have been known to Mr. Carpenter, and has since been admitted by him in our presence. The good faith and perfect fairness of Mr. Carpenter were not, therefore, quite of the nature we then believed them to be, and we have no hesitation in affirming that he was a most improper person to be selected to act as referee in such a matter.

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In the same issue, Walsh published the reports of Carpenter and Coulcher and his own decision, as follows:
Mr A. R. Wallace, by means of the experiment agreed on as satisfactory to Mr Hampden and his umpire by both of these gentlemen, has proved to my satisfaction “the curvature to and fro” of the Bedford Level Canal between Welney Bridge and Welch’s Dam [note 2.4] (six miles) to the extent of five feet, more or less. I therefore propose to pay Mr A. R. Wallace the sum of £1000, now standing in my name at Coutts’ Bank to abide the result of the above test, next Thursday, unless I have notice to the contrary from Mr Hampden. J. H. W
346, Strand, March 18
Walsh also mailed a copy of his decision to Hampden on March 18, probably immediately after the meeting with Wallace and Carpenter. Meanwhile, Hampden had written and published a pamphlet entitled God’s Truth or Man’s Science, Which Shall Prevail? Upon receiving Walsh’s decision, Hampden apparently wrote smoking letters to both Walsh and Wallace, enclosing copies of the pamphlet. While God’s Truth has not survived, its contents can be surmised from Wallace’s response:
Now for the assertions and challenges in your pamphlet you were so good as to send me. Your proposed further tests are some very good, some quite worthless. All those which in any way depend on an apparent slope up or down, as judged of by the unaided eye, are utterly worthless; because, of all things, the eye is least able to judge accurately of a level, and if a line deviated as much as eight feet instead of only eight inches in a mile, I would defy you to tell by the eye alone if it were level, or sloped up or sloped down. [ref. 2.20]
Obviously, Hampden hoped for further experiments. Wallace had regained the patience and composure lost at the canal, and he deemed three of Hampden’s proposed tests reasonable:
First. The test proposed at p. 5, to place a spirit-level at the middle station, and take a sight both ways to Welney Bridge and Old Bedford Bridge (not Welche’s Dam as you state) the water at the two ends would certainly be shown to be about five feet below the horizontal straight line touching the water at the middle station. The only difficulty would be in getting the level placed high enough to be above the vapours and unequally heated air close to the ground; but I have no doubt, if it were placed on the elevated towing path, its height above the water would be about five less than the height of the points on the two bridges cut by the crosshair, which determines the true level line.
2nd. As to the continuation of the curve beyond the three miles in each direction. This is also a good experiment, and I maintain that a signal staff placed one mile further off than either bridge, would show the water there to be

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eight or nine feet below that at the middle station, and at two miles further off, fourteen or fifteen feet, as it should be if the curve continues—not less than at the Bridge, as it should be if your theory of a series of short curves, thus ^^^^^^^^^^^^ is true.
3rd. The test of the lamp (p. 8) 18 inches above the water on a clear night at one Bridge, being visible by an eye or telescope situated, say three feet above the water at the other Bridge six miles distant. I maintain that it would not be visible; while at the same time, it would be distinctly visible from the Bridge at an elevation of about fifteen feet.
Now, on each or all of these three points I am ready, after the present wager has been finally settled, to meet you on any fair terms you may propose, the umpire being any well-known civil engineer, surveyor, optician, or scientific man—the questions all being simple matters of fact, which it requires merely good eyesight, some knowledge of instruments and experiment, and a true tongue, to pronounce upon justly. [ref. 2.21]
Thus, Wallace was not satisfied with being pronounced the winner. Hampden was not convinced that decision was just, and Wallace was perfectly willing to make further experiments to help Hampden understand.
John Henry Walsh read Hampden’s latest letter with astonishment. Wagers were common as riding crops in the sporting circles Walsh traveled, but it was almost unheard of for a gentleman to welsh on a bet, especially a bet he had initiated. In a letter dated March 23, 1870, he asked:
Am I to understand that you give me formal notice to return you the stake? I am unwilling to believe this, as I had hoped you would have admitted the correctness of the award, at all events, as far as it went. I have thought it my duty, in justice to Mr. Wallace, to state the matter fairly this week, but I hope you will, for your own sake, reconsider your decision. [ref. 2.22]
Hampden did not reconsider. Neither did Walsh. Despite threats from Hampden and confrontations with Carpenter, he delivered the stakes to Wallace—on April Fools’ Day!

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EE--bbooookkss

PPrreevv BBaassee NNeexxtt

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Chapter 3: The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed

“Hampden and Wallace” has a nice ring to it, like “Laurel and Hardy,”
and it would have made a good name for a vaudeville act touring Victorian music halls. In fact, the Hampden and Wallace act entertained England for two decades, but their farce was played out in the public press and courtrooms rather than on music hall stages. Wallace’s ill-fated attempt to spike flat-earthism only brought it increased attention and gave it a unity it had never had before. “The Bedford Canal Swindle” became the zetetic theme song and rallying cry. Believers saw in Hampden a David who boldly attacked Goliath only to be diddled out of his victory. Secret flatearthers came tumbling out of the woodwork.

John Henry Walsh’s decision in favor of Wallace left John Hampden shaken. For once in his life, he experienced self doubt. He sent “Parallax” £10 and asked him to return to the Old Bedford Canal and repeat his experiments. “Parallax” obliged. He and several others spent three days on the site making further observations. Rowbotham and his team returned to London on the evening of April 18, and they reported the canal still as flat as it was when Rowbotham lived there in 1838. [note 3.1] Even this did not satisfy Hampden, and he subsequently spent another £10 to have printer Alfred Bull conduct further (and equally satisfactory) experiments.

First, however, Bull had another task to perform. Within days of Rowbotham’s return, Bull printed and published a pamphlet entitled Is Water Level or Convex After All? The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed. The title page names no author, but the style and tone are unmistakably Hampden’s. (Hampden was as hardnosed and meanspirited a controversialist as ever hurled an epithet in lieu of an argument.) His opening words show he was in no mood to take prisoners:

Perhaps there is not upon record a more palpable illustration of the notorious rascality of the scientific world than has been recently exhibited in the trial between Mr. Hampden, of Swindon, and Mr. Wallace, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, of London, aided and abetted by a local “sawbones” of Downham Market, who acted as Mr. Wallace’s referee, and the Editor of The Field newspaper, who was his chosen umpire. [ref. 3.1]

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On the same page, Hampden states his motives for making the challenge:
Mr. Hampden took up the subject, simply and solely relying on the fact that the Bible, or Scriptural evidence, as far as it went, uniformly ignored, if it did not directly oppose the notion of a globular earth. Not a single verse throughout the whole Scriptures hint [sic] at any expression confirmatory of the Newtonian theory. Mr. H. knew this would be impossible if a revolving globe were really a fact … [ref. 3.2]
Hampden briefly described the experiment, dusting off Martin W. B. Coulcher as “a local apothecary, who, if all reports were true, was not over scrupulous in making assertions according to circumstances.” After censuring Coulcher for refusing to argue with Carpenter, Hampden trained his guns on his primary targets:
If there is one class of men, next to horse dealers and jockeys who bear the unenviable reputation of being the most trickey [sic] and unscrupulous in their assertions, it is the members of our scientific societies. [ref. 3.3]
The remark about horse dealers and jockeys was obviously aimed at sporting editor Walsh. In case that shot missed, Hampden fired another volley:
Take these editorial functionaries away from their scissors and paste-pot, and they are found to be as great blockheads as other men—mere slaves to the popular taste, and most of them as venal as any hireling in existence. There is no doubt some moral or pecuniary pressure was brought to bear on the late decision, and, like all cowards, Mr. Walsh was afraid to uphold the truth and the palpable evidence of the reports … [ref. 3.4]
Having now libeled everyone in sight, Hampden briefly addressed the form of the earth. He insisted that Wallace’s experiment had failed to demonstrate any curvature, and the diagrams of the referees proved it. He found Wallace’s explanations contradictory, Walsh afflicted with ignorance and stupidity, and the conventional view of the universe utterly unsupported by evidence:
[T]hose who assert the earth to be a globe must be utterly regardless of the truth of their system, and merely uphold it simply because it contradicts the Bible, which is all these infidels seem to care about. They have never made a single experiment the truth of which can be incontestably proved, and they stick to their insane theory because it is ingenious, and makes thoughtless blockheads stare with amazement. One single proof would be worth a thousand mere assertions. [ref. 3.5]
This was the sort of refutation he would always prefer. Returning to

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Walsh, Hampden wrote:
He has … placed a rod in the hands of Mr. Hampden, who, perhaps of all men in the world, is most ready to inflict the severest retaliation on those who dare attempt to force their lying frauds upon his acceptance. Deception and falsehood, meanness and cowardice always excite in his mind an intensity of loathing that few, perhaps, are able to realise. [ref. 3.6]
As we will see, Walsh and Hampden took turns applying the rod to each other.
In closing, Hampden noted that Wallace had agreed in principle to another experiment. If the new experiment demonstrated the convexity of a body of water, Hampden would pay all expenses and admit to libel and slander. If it failed, he would claim the £1000 and demand a full apology. If his challenge was ignored, he would sue everyone in sight.
Is Water Level or Convex After All? was difficult to ignore. Hampden had initiated the Bedford Canal fiasco with an advertisement in Scientific Opinion, so perhaps its editors felt a proprietary interest in (or professional responsibility for) the matter. In any case, the magazine reacted to the pamphlet with a full-page editorial in the April 27, 1870 issue. It says in part:
This brochure, written anonymously, is a species of abusive Jeremiad of the very lowest and most offensive type, and we can only say of it that, if it is not beneath the contempt of Mr. Wallace, it is a publication which that gentleman would do well to put into his lawyer’s hands; for it is the most libellous and disgraceful tirade we have ever been pained by reading.
And further:
We can well comprehend how painful it must be to Mr. Hampden to have to pay £500 for indulging in the nonsense he has enjoyed so long, but that by no means justifies the course either he or his friends have taken in publishing this pamphlet; and we trust that Mr. Wallace, who has had the courage to put the cap and bells on Mr. Hampden’s head, will equally apply the legal flagellum to the individual who has had the audacity and bad taste to write the pamphlet, and the cowardice to publish it anonymously.
Despite this advice, Wallace tried to ignore Hampden’s libels. Hampden considered silence an admission of guilt, and he produced a blizzard of letters-to-the-editor denouncing Wallace. He also bombarded Wallace’s friends and colleagues with sulfurous letters and postcards. At length, Wallace grew tired of being publicly branded a knave, liar, thief, swindler,

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imposter, rogue, and felon. In January of 1871 he sued Hampden for libel. Flat-earther B. Charles Brough described the result as follows:
The City Remembrancer, before whom the trial was heard, considering the affair a “most curious thing,” directed the jury to return a verdict for the plaintiff, and to assess the damages which would be likely to repair Mr. Wallace’s integrity. Accordingly to counterbalance the effect which the charges of “swindling” were calculated to produce, a verdict for £600 was duly returned. [ref. 3.7]
Characteristically, Brough neglected to mention why Wallace won a directed verdict. Hampden never contested the libel suit, for he had another strategy. While Wallace was in court, Hampden signed all his assets over to his solicitor son-in-law and declared bankruptcy. Wallace’s judgment for £600 was uncollectible, but he ended up with a whopping bill for legal costs.
Soon afterward, Walsh, also bespattered with the fallout of Hampden’s rage, brought a criminal action for libel at London’s famous Old Bailey. The evidence was overwhelming, so Hampden pleaded guilty and apologized. He was ordered to keep the peace for a year, equivalent to being put on probation.
Hampden’s peace ended long before his probation expired. On June 28, 1871, Annie Wallace received the following letter:
Madam—If your infernal thief of a husband is brought home some day on a hurdle, with every bone in his head smashed to a pulp, you will know the reason. Do you tell him from me he is a lying infernal thief, and as sure as his name is Wallace he never dies in his bed.
You must be a miserable wretch to be obliged to live with a convicted felon. Do not think or let him think I have done with him.
John Hampden [ref. 3.8]
Twelve days later, Hampden was brought up before the Stratford bench of magistrates on a charge of writing a threatening letter. Annie Wallace testified that she had previously received a similar letter, which she could not produce. Alfred Wallace testified that the handwriting and signature appeared to be those of John Hampden. The same was true of another letter introduced as evidence, this one addressed to the Committee of the Entomological Society, of which Wallace was president. It read as follows:
Gentlemen,—Cannot you get some low, pettifogging attorney to try and defend

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your president from being a thief and a swindler—a rogue and imposter? Of course no respectable men would have the name of such an infernal rogue on their books. If I were to meet him in the middle of Regent-street or the Strand, tell him from me that I would spit in his face and kick him into the gutter.
John Hampden
The bench said that it seemed to be a case of a crazy man writing crazy letters. Regarding his letter to Mrs. Wallace, Hampden told the court that some young friends of his were very much disturbed about the way Wallace had treated him; fearing violence, he had tried to warn Wallace. The skeptical judge ordered Hampden to put up £100 as a surety that he would keep the peace for three months and to find two other sureties at £50 apiece. Hampden spent a week in jail before two additional sureties came forward. [ref. 3.9]
Criminal libel became a habit with Hampden; in the next four years he would be convicted three times. Wallace apparently got little sympathy from his scientific colleagues. Darwin, at least, expressed his condolences regarding the threatening letters, writing, “I was grieved to see in the Daily News that the madman about the flat earth has been threatening your life. What an odious trouble this must have been to you.” [ref. 3.10] Most thought he should never have gotten involved, and there were presumably whispers about a former land-surveyor trying to act the gentleman.
William Carpenter remained silent for more than a year after his controversy with Coulcher and Walsh in The Field. Not until the summer of 1871 did he publish his first pamphlet on the Bedford Canal experiment, Water, Not Convex: The Earth Not a Globe. The first really detailed description of the Bedford Canal experiment and its aftermath, it is generally reliable despite Carpenter’s obvious bias. It is particularly interesting because of Carpenter’s expertise in Pitman shorthand, and some of the dialogue he preserved is quoted in the previous chapter. Unfortunately, Carpenter was a tedious writer with a penchant for petty quibbling and a genius for misunderstanding simple English. In a letter to Hampden, Wallace noted that if one sighted along a line of poles between Old Bedford Bridge and Welney Bridge, the tops should appear to be “rising higher and higher to the middle point, and thence sinking lower and lower to the furthest one.” Carpenter commented as follows:
The surface of the earth is to be seen “rising” and “falling!” How strange! Why, have we not just been provided with the exact amount of curvature in one continuously progressive scale, without any “ups” and “downs,” from eight inches in the first mile, to 130 feet in the fourteenth mile? Is Mr. Wallace right,

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and all the other scientific men wrong? Does the surface of the earth curvate continuously upwards, or continuously downwards, or, first upwards, then downwards? Is there a gradual incline, a gradual decline, or is there first one then the other? These are questions every thoughtful man will ask.
Nonsense! A thoughtful man would easily understand what Wallace meant. Carpenter carped continuously in everything he wrote, and after a few pages of his stuff, Hampden’s rages sound almost reasonable. Unlike Hampden, Carpenter knew how to walk the thin line between fair comment and libel. His innuendoes contain the same accusations Hampden made, but he was never sued. His penchant for detail made some of his tiresome works informative, but Hampden’s tirades are more interesting reading.
Meanwhile, the flat-earth movement thrived on the controversy. For the first time in its history, the movement got national publicity. True, the publicity was all bad, but the zetetics finally gained recognition. Rowbotham, Carpenter, and Hampden no longer stood alone in the public eye. The Bedford Canal experiment brought in new blood and spawned the first genuine outpouring of zetetic literature. One writer brought into the flat-earth controversy by the Bedford Canal controversy was Empson Edward Middleton.
Some benighted souls imagine that no practical seaman could ever be a flat-earther. Empson Edward Middleton, the first to circumnavigate England single-handed, is an excellent counterexample. To a modern landlubber, a voyage that rarely left sight of land sounds unimpressive. But sailing vessels rarely sank in the open sea. The rocks, shoals, and tides found close to shore were (and still are) the greatest danger. Middleton brought the Kate in to shore nearly every night, thus traversing the danger zone twice daily for much of his voyage. In the days before auxiliary engines, electronic navigation systems, and large-scale piloting charts, putting a 21-foot yawl into a strange harbor single-handed was not for the faint of heart, and Middleton’s survival sometimes depended upon heroic feats of rowing. He described his hair-raising experiences in The Cruise of the Kate, first published in April 1870 and still in print.
Empson Edward Middleton was not exactly born to the sea, but his maternal grandmother came from a ship-owning family, the Tindals of Scarborough. The Middleton family tree was sufficiently distinguished that grandfather Empson had tried unsuccessfully to wangle a title. When young Empson was born in Jamaica in 1838, his father Boswell was governor of the island. Boswell Middleton died in the cholera epidemic of

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1853, and Empson was put aboard a Tindal ship, the Albemarle. He proved himself a gifted helmsman, so good at steadying a wallowing vessel that when the crew went aloft in foul weather, they asked that he be put at the helm. He served in the British Army in India, but Lieutenant Middleton was not a happy man, and he returned to England in 1864 or 1865 and retired from the Army by selling his commission. Being a gentleman, Middleton had no need of (or taste for) employment or profession. Instead, he decided to translate Virgil’s epic Latin poem the Aeneid into rhymed English pentameters. It was a daunting task, from which his voyage on the Kate was intended as a temporary respite.
The successful author leaped into the flat-earth fray in late 1871. As a youth aboard the Albemarle, Middleton had questioned the rotundity of the earth. Now he took exception to some antizetetic letters-to-the-editor sent to a British newspaper by an anonymous “Globe-ite.” Middleton engaged “Globe-ite” in one of those letters-to-the-editor battles beloved by the 19th century British press. Middleton’s four contributions, later published under the title The Trigonometreadidit Letters, illustrate his unique style. His response to Globe-ite’s first published letter began thus:
Sir—Kindly permit me in all humility to arouse, wake up, alarm, terrify, freeze Globe-ite with a burning sensation that I wonder. Would Globe-ite be sensitively pricked up to the distant rumbling, mighty roaring, all-earthclashing, sea-nonconvexing, air-spitting, gentle ear-tickler? Then let Globe-ite be aware that I quiver, shake, nay—rattle with amazement to know, would he (Globe-ite) allow, recognize, and determinedly swear that there is such a thing as perpendicular! Swear, Globe-ite, swear! affirm yea! It is affirmed. Globeite has graciously condescended that he acknowledges an ordinance of nature called (according to position) vertical, upright, perpendicular, or otherwise.” [ref. 3.11]
Middleton argued that if there is on earth such a thing as a perpendicular, there must also be such a thing as a horizontal. If horizontal, then flat, Q.E.D. Unfortunately, Middleton’s arguments were rarely clear to anyone but himself, and when prose failed, he switched to verse. For example, in his third letter, he wrote:
The earth’s a plane! the earth’s a plane! Hurrah for “Parallax” then;
Hurrah, hurrah! hurrah, hurrah! For Carpenter and Hampden!
Another cheer for publishers, And printers, too, who boldly
Set forth the truth! set forth the truth!

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And shun the false and mouldy. [ref. 3.12]

It is hard to argue with this kind of logic. One suspects that most globites kept out of Middleton’s way as much as possible, though not for the reasons he imagined. He followed The Trigonometreadidit Letters with more of the same in his Controversy on the Shape of the Earth between a Newtonian Astronomer and a Poet (1872).
With secret flat-earthers coming out of the closet and new converts coming into the fold, the time was ripe for a zetetic periodical. Hampden tried to start one in 1871, [ref. 3.13] but he never got it off the ground. More successful was B. Charles Brough, who brought forth the first issue of The Zetetic: A Monthly Journal of Cosmographical Science on July 1, 1872. Brough opened The Zetetic as follows:
ADDRESS TO THE READER
If any explanation were necessary for the appearance of The Zetetic in the ranks of journalism, it might be found in the fact that while almost every phase of scientific, political, and social problems has its own particular organ, and medium of communication, those who have been led to believe in the principles of Zeteticism have been hitherto totally unrepresented; and, owing to the partiality and intolerance of the press, frequently misrepresented.
The Zetetic was published in Brough’s hometown of Stafford, a small market town 25 miles north of Birmingham, then England’s industrial powerhouse. Stafford’s best-known native son was Izaak Walton (1593– 1683), who probably wet his first line in the river Sow, which flows through the town. Little is known of Brough’s background, but he seems to have been a middle-class professional, perhaps an attorney (or solicitor). He had already published a pamphlet entitled What Is the Shape of the Earth? and perhaps other works, but none survive.
The Zetetic is a gold mine of flat-earth trivia. Correspondence published in the premier issue indicates that an informal network of flat-earthers was already in place. One of Brough’s aims was to formalize this network, and the August 1872 issue of The Zetetic announced that “a Zetetic Society … is now in the course of formation …” The Zetetic Society remained in the course of formation for as long as The Zetetic was published, but nothing came of it. [note 3.2]
The early issues of The Zetetic are a showcase of flat-earthism in the years immediately following the Bedford Canal experiment. Rowbotham

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contributed a series of autobiographical essays, which are our primary source of information about his background and early life. Hampden and Carpenter made cameo appearances with letters-to-the-editor. Several flat-earthers we will meet again in later chapters first appeared in The Zetetic: Frederick D. Evans, pamphleteer James Naylor, and pamphleteer and zetetic lecturer William Bathgate.
Brough himself was already attacking conventional astronomy in public forums. In the first issue of The Zetetic, he alludes a recent public debate on the shape of the earth, apparently with our old friend J. Dyer, but he gives no details. As part of his flat-earth ministry, Brough offered a lecture program entitled “Impeachment of Modern Astronomy.” The full program took three evenings. Brough gave formal lectures on the first and second evenings, and (at his option) held an open discussion on the third “in towns where there are Newtonians sufficiently competent to handle the subject.” [ref. 3.14] Brough delivered his lecture series twice in the week of December 15–21, 1872, in Stafford on Monday through Wednesday (December 16–18) and in Liverpool on Thursday and Friday. [note 3.3]
Neither lecture series was well-attended. The hometown lecture was reported in the Staffordshire Advertiser as follows:
“IMPEACHMENT OF THE NEWTONIAN ASTRONOMY.”—Such was the heading of the placards which announced three lectures to be delivered in the Lyceum on the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, by Mr. B. Chas. Brough, but notwithstanding its taking character the audiences were not numerous. On the first evening, the Mayor, B.P. Wright, Esq., presided, and, in his opening remarks, stated that his presence there by no means committed him to the views propounded by the lecturer, he merely attended to give countenance to a townsman in explaining those views, which his worship good-humouredly observed, might be so dear to him as to lead him to anticipate the time when he would be placed on the pedestal of fame, and persons point to him and say, “A greater man than Newton is here.” Mr. Brough then proceeded with his lecture, in which, with no lack of ability, he attempted to enforce those ideas respecting astronomy which our correspondent “Common-sense” so completely refuted, and which are contrary to the experience alike of the man of sense and the untutored sailor [italics added by Brough]. [ref. 3.15]
Brough took umbrage at this report (especially the italicized passages), and he printed his rebuttal in the January 1873 issue of The Zetetic. The mayor said no such thing, he insisted. As for the refutation by “Commonsense,” Brough made a revealing statement:
It is not true that the utter inaccuracy of “Parallax’s” system, would, in the

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slightest degree, invalidate the truth of Mr. Brough’s Impeachment; neither is it true that Mr. Brough advocated, or permitted the discussion of, Zetetic Astronomy … [ref. 3.16]
This suggests that Brough’s public approach was pure obscurantism. He attacked Newtonian astronomy hammer and tongs but refused to present or defend any alternative. Obscurantist tactics work best with unsophisticated audiences, and modern creationists mimic Brough’s approach by assaulting conventional science while refusing to say what they think should replace it.
Brough was a prickly sort, and he filled the pages of The Zetetic with barbs directed at the spherical opposition. Though his knowledge of the Bedford Canal affair was entirely secondhand, he persisted in commenting on it to Wallace’s disadvantage from the first issue to the last he edited. Brough seemed to think that some combination of insult and innuendo would persuade Wallace to participate in a rerun of the experiment. One example of his technique should suffice.
Between battles with flat-earthers, Wallace spent most of 1871 and part of 1872 planning and building his dream house in an old chalk pit near Grays, Essex, about 20 miles east of London and just north of the river Thames. With unfailing naiveté, he hired a notoriously crooked contractor who cost him considerable time and money and eventually left him managing the project himself. The Wallaces finally moved into the new house, named The Dell, in mid-1872. Some letters Brough subsequently sent to Wallace’s old address in Barking were returned by the post office. Commenting on this, Brough wrote:
About this time Mr. Hampden had commenced to institute legal proceedings for the recovery of his £500, but no-one would insinuate, for a moment, that this was the cause of Mr. Wallace’s exodus, any more than he would attribute the ‘journey’ of discretionary French patriots, during the late Franco-German war, to the most distant sea-ports, to any fear, however remote, of the fortunes of war. [ref. 3.17]
Wallace had actually been negotiating a new experiment, but this cheap shot, so characteristic of Brough, apparently eliminated Wallace’s interest in communicating with him. Besides, Brough’s career at The Zetetic was rapidly drawing to a close.
With the September 1872 issue, Brough became joint editor with “Parallax,” although the editorial style continued to bear Brough’s mark. (Brough was afflicted with that unctuous intellectual dishonesty so

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common among sectarian controversialists.) In March 1873, the title was changed to The Zetetic and Anti-Theorist: A Monthly Journal of Practical Cosmography, and “Parallax” was listed as the sole editor. On the first page, Rowbotham described his favorite Bedford Canal experiment, one he claimed to have worked successfully many times. He proposed that a boat equipped with a flag 6 feet high be rowed 6 miles down the canal and observed with a telescope 8 inches above the water. According to the spherical theory, the boat and flag should go out of sight behind the curvature of the earth. In numerous repetitions of this experiment, said Rowbotham, the observer had never failed to keep the boat and flag in view for the full 6 miles. He concluded, “Trial of the above experiment is the challenge here solemnly given, in the interest of truth alone, to the scientific men of the whole world.” [ref. 3.18] There were no takers.
For his own part, Rowbotham was still lecturing actively. On April 21, 22, 28, and 29, 1873, he gave a series of lectures in the Penge Hall, near Anerly Railway Station, Penge, about 7 miles south of the Tower of London. Each lecture started at 8:00 p.m. General admission was 6d. and reserved seats 1s. for each lecture, or 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d., respectively, for the whole course of four lectures.
The discussion period following the first lecture included some fireworks. “Parallax” reported the event as follows:
On Monday evening last, April 21st, Mr. J. Dyer, a gentleman who some time ago published a pamphlet entitled ‘Parallax Answered,’ [note 3.4] attended the first of the second course of lectures delivered in the Penge Hall. At the close, when discussion was invited, Mr. D. walked to the foot of the platform, and boldly declared that he was able to show that the whole of the lecturer’s statements and arguments were absolutely false. [ref. 3.19]
Dyer was feisty and somewhat abusive, and the chairman addressed him in strong language. Rowbotham ended the discussion by challenging Dyer to debate the issue at another time. Dyer accepted.
The “Parallax” vs. Dyer debate was held at the Penge Hall on May 5, 1873. Again, the tickets were 6d. for general admission, 1s. for reserved seats. Each speaker gave a 15-minute opening address, and then they spoke alternately for 10 minutes each until the end. Rowbotham gave a thirdperson account of the debate in The Zetetic, beginning as follows:
“Parallax” opened the debate, by remarking that the subject they were met to discuss was one of the most important which it was possible for the human mind to grapple with. The doctrine that the earth was a globe was so

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interwoven with different other subjects, that to show its fallacy was practically to pull down all the vast superstructure of modern science and philosophy; and it was not to be wondered at therefore that so many of the learned professors of the day were so anxiously determined to resist the advance of contrary teaching. But they were divided as to the best means of accomplishing their object. Many declared it was better to leave it unnoticed; to “pooh, pooh,” and treat it with apparent indifference. Others, as our friend Mr. Dyer, thought otherwise, that it ought to be attacked and battled with on every possible occasion. He called Mr. Dyer a friend, because, however savage and impatient in his manner of opposition, he afforded an opportunity, by discussing the subject, of shewing its true importance and strength if it were true; and its insignificance and weakness if it were false. [ref. 3.20]
Rowbotham argued that if the surface of water were horizontal, then Newtonian astronomy is dead. Dyer (if we are to believe Rowbotham) opened as follows:
I am here to affirm that all that “Parallax” has said is a mass of error in every respect. I object entirely to his telling you of certain experiments; and requiring you to take his word. Neither I nor you shall take his or any other man’s ipse dixit. [ref. 3.21]
Dyer implied that Rowbotham lied about his experiments. Rowbotham said that Dyer should not make such statements before going to the canal and making experiments himself. He then issued the following challenge:
He [Rowbotham] now gave him a formal challenge to do so; and in order that he might have no excuse, he would undertake to pay all his expenses, there and back, on the sole consideration that he should agree to present himself before a public meeting, called for the purpose in that hall, to state explicitly and without reserve what he had seen with his own eyes. [ref. 3.22]
Dyer declined, supposedly as follows:
Yes, this is the way “Parallax” is in the habit of dealing with his opponents; and it really takes the wind out of us! It seems to an audience so fair and aboveboard that very often they think we ought to go, and that we haven’t a leg to stand on unless we do. But I beg to say that I entirely decline to do anything so foolish—who knows what would occur when we got there? Who knows what would be the conduct of “Parallax” and his party? what would they say and do, and what version would they give on their return? I have no doubt that the whole thing would be so muddled and cooked that no satisfaction would be felt by the public. [ref. 3.23]
Rowbotham insisted that Dyer and others didn’t have the courage to do the experiment. Dyer argued that Wallace’s experiment had settled the matter, and there was no point in doing further experiments. Rowbotham

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then appealed to the audience as follows:
You see, ladies and gentlemen, how the matter stands. Mr. Dyer refuses to make experiments to test the matter at issue; and he relies upon the unsatisfactory and inconsistent results obtained by Mr. Wallace, who declined, and still declines, to try the plain, simple experiment I described. Why do these people so strangely shrink from the only proper test which can be instituted? I leave the matter with you, for your own individual consideration. [ref. 3.24]
At that point, Dyer was beaten. He went on to argue that ships disappearing over the horizon prove the earth’s sphericity, but Rowbotham had been answering that one for more than two decades. He knew how this well-known illusion occurred, he said, and he explained and illustrated the zetetic law of perspective. (The latter depends upon zetetic geometry, which, like creationist thermodynamics, sounds plausible enough to a lay audience.) He challenged Dyer to refute his explanation with a demonstration.
Dyer declined. He said he had twenty proofs that the earth is a globe, and began presenting them. He had barely begun arguing from the sun’s motion when Rowbotham interrupted to say that Dyer was talking about the consequences of the earth’s shape rather than the shape itself. He would be happy to debate that topic on another night, but it was not this evening’s subject. It was now about eleven o'clock, and they broke up, Dyer no doubt going home a sadder (if not wiser) man.
Dyer’s refusal to participate with Rowbotham in another Bedford Canal experiment was nothing new. Rowbotham had been repeating his challenge in every issue of The Zetetic without result. Finally, in the July 1873 issue, he directed it specifically to Alfred Russel Wallace. To be sure Wallace didn’t miss it, Rowbotham sent him a copy of the issue. For a great scientist, Wallace was a remarkably slow learner. In a letter dated July 14, 1873, he accepted Parallax’s challenge.
Again, a voluminous correspondence ensued, and Rowbotham reproduced much of it in the August–September 1873 issue of The Zetetic. Wallace agreed that Rowbotham’s experiment would be conclusive, saying that he would “cheerfully abide the result of the trial with any impartial judges to decide whether the boat continues to be seen or not.” [ref. 3.25] He insisted, however, that the observer must be someone accustomed to using a telescope and suggested that Rowbotham should appoint “any professional land surveyor or civil engineer from the neighbourhood” [ref. 3.26] to make the observations. As for himself, he would get Martin W. B. Coulcher to

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observe for him again. Eventually, Parallax agreed to accept a surveyor named by Wallace, saying he would himself make “collateral observations.” Coulcher, whose home was in Downham Market, near the canal, advised that July was not favorable, due to mirage. Coulcher recommended October or November, but “Parallax” cited his own experience there and insisted there should be no problem. They eventually settled on August 26, 1873.
Wallace had made a dangerous concession. The successful canal experiments Rowbotham described in his lectures and literature invariably had the observer’s eyes close to the canal waters. Parallax suggested that the experimenters use punting boats—narrow, flat-bottomed, very lowprofile boats often used for wildfowl hunting. Instead of a punt gun, a huge boat-mounted shotgun used for massacring sitting ducks, one of the boats would be equipped with a powerful telescope mounted inches above the water. Another boat with a short flagstaff mounted on it would row off down the canal. The observer would note whether the flag remained in view for the 6 miles from Old Bedford Bridge to Welney Bridge or went out of sight behind the curvature of the earth. On a cool morning in late August, with the canal water warmer than the air, the flag just might remain in view! Either Wallace didn’t understand air refraction or he trusted Coulcher and the surveyor, one Burton, not to attempt the experiment with an inversion layer near the water.
Rowbotham was insistent on getting the observer’s eye into the mirage layer. In case the experimenters couldn’t get suitable boats, he borrowed “an improved diving dress” from Messrs. Heinke & Company, Submarine Engineers, explicitly so that the observer’s eye and telescope could be kept “within a few inches of the surface.” [ref. 3.27]
Neither Wallace nor Rowbotham went to the Bedford Canal for the new experiment. Wallace never intended to go, and Rowbotham had to cancel at the last minute. Coulcher proved a better weather prophet than Rowbotham; the experiment had to be called off due to mirage. [note 3.5] Rowbotham complained in The Zetetic that they got started too late (ten o'clock), and he proposed a new experiment. Nothing came of it.
The Zetetic was by this time probably struggling financially. Rowbotham was not as mean-spirited as Brough, which improved its tone, but overall The Zetetic went downhill under his editorship. From the day Rowbotham took over as sole editor, The Zetetic never carried a major article by another flat-earth writer. He printed letters-to-the-editor, miscellaneous

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notes, more of his reminiscences, and sections from his book.
Rowbotham’s own interests apparently were shifting. For instance, he was advertising a new book, The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, Zetetically Considered, which he continually assured readers would be released soon. [note 3.6] He was also promoting his ideas on patriarchal longevity and publishing Earth Life, a periodical tract promoting “Dr. Birley’s Syrup of Free Phosphorus.” The patent medicine business was strong and profitable, and Carpenter, Hampden, and other flat-earthers were peddling the stuff for him.
The Zetetic folded with a double issue dated October–November 1873. Rowbotham continued to give occasional flat-earth lectures, but his reduced activity left something of a power vacuum in the zetetic world. By default, Hampden became the leading zetetic spokesman. To Rowbotham’s chagrin, many thought Hampden was the famous “Parallax.”
Hampden’s pen, of course, had not been idle during this time. In late October 1872, Wallace had again prosecuted him for libel at London’s Old Bailey. The November 1872 Zetetic reported the case as follows:
[A] few days ago, Mr. John Hampden was charged, at the Bow-street Police Court, before Mr. Flowers, with libelling Mr. Alfred Russell [sic] Wallace. [ref. 3.28]
The case was heard before Mr. Commissioner Kerr. The editor of The Zetetic was not pleased with the result.
On Monday, the 2nd ult., the Wallace “libel” case was unseemingly disposed of. At an early stage in the proceedings the prosecutor, apparently desirous of avoiding a critical examination, pressed for an apology to be made; and, as Mr. Commissioner Kerr, before whom the trial was heard, received the suggestion with favour, this course was eventually agreed on. Such a denouement may be very palatable to Mr. Wallace—doubtless it is so—but we cannot help thinking that, throughout the transaction, he has asserted an honesty which may be better described as legal than moral. [ref. 3.29]
The prosecutor referred to was, of course, Wallace. In a letter published in the next issue, Wallace charged that the Zetetic had again misrepresented him. Rather than pressing for an apology himself, he was pressed to accept one by one of Hampden’s friends. Whoever made the suggestion, Mr. Kerr let Hampden off on his promise to apologize to Wallace in twelve newspapers and magazines. The Zetetic carried the apology in the December 1872 issue:

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“PUBLIC APOLOGY”—I, JOHN HAMPDEN, of 33, Warwick Street, New Cross, do hereby make a full and complete apology to Mr. Alfred R. Wallace for having falsely accused him of unfair or dishonourable conduct, and I acknowledge that all the accusations I have made against him since April, 1870, are wholly without foundation, and I hereby retract and withdraw everything I have said, written, or published reflecting on his character as a man of honour and integrity.
J H
Hampden didn’t mean a word of it. In January 1873, Wallace again had Hampden brought up for libel. Again, Hampden expressed contrition. Again, he was ordered to print an apology and to keep the peace. Again, the judge neglected to confiscate his ink bottle, and the never-peaceful John continued as before.
By this time, Hampden had moved to Croydon, Surrey, a suburb 10 miles south of London Bridge. While the editors of The Zetetic were still trying to get a Zetetic Society organized, Hampden established the New Geographical Society. The headquarters seem to have been Hampden’s home, and it’s not clear that the society had more than one member. In the ensuing years, the New Geographical Society published numerous items, all of them written or edited by Hampden himself. An early example, issued in June 1873, was a relatively innocuous four-page tract, A Few Scriptural Inconsistencies with the Newtonian Theory. Other items from Hampden’s pen, especially his letters-to-the-editor published in various newspapers, were not innocuous.
In the summer of 1873, while he was negotiating with Rowbotham for further experiments at the Old Bedford Canal, Wallace had Hampden brought up at the Norwich Assizes for further libels. [note 3.7] Once again, Hampden had been defaming Wallace in letters-to-the-editor published in various newspapers. This time, the judge rejected Hampden’s apologies and promises of good behavior. Hampden spent two months in Newgate prison.
Newgate must not have agreed with Hampden, for he didn’t publish a single pamphlet in 1874. By the following year, he had caught his wind, and on March 6, 1875, he was indicted at the Chelmsford Assizes for new libels against Wallace. Chelmsford was a marketing and manufacturing town 30 miles northeast of London. A 12th century stone bridge over the river Chelm had once guaranteed the town’s importance. The Chelmsford Assizes were held in the handsome shire hall near the ancient bridge. On

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the outskirts of town stood the Chelmsford Gaol, a forbidding stone edifice dating from the 17th century. Considering the evidence and Hampden’s record, the judge ordered Hampden incarcerated in the Chelmsford Gaol for a year, and he further ordered him to keep the peace for two more years, under heavy sureties.
Hampden’s second jail term in as many years ensured his martyrdom. The renewed controversy brought a relative outpouring of flat-earth material. Carpenter returned to the fray with two pamphlets, Wallace’s Wonderful Water and Proctor’s “Planet Earth”. The former was admirably summarized by Carpenter himself in his advertisements for the pamphlet:
WALLACE’S Experiment was chiefly for the gaining of £500. from J. Hampden; and it is tolerably well known that Mr. Wallace succeeded in doing so. But it is not by any means well known in what manner this was effected. To supply this deficiency is the object of the author. He was an eye-witness of the Experiment for the whole of the week that was occupied with it, and is, consequently, able to say what he knows of the subject, and not merely what he imagines. He does not libel Mr. Wallace. Oh, no! He uses a more WONDERFUL and effective weapon than that which the law can put down. He trusts to the power which TRUTH alone affords, and to FACTS which are too stubborn to be put down by any law whatever. The subject is bound to interest the Reader: for Truth is stranger than Fiction; and, moreover, its importance to the student of Nature cannot easily be over-estimated. If it is simply a fact that the surface of water is level—and not curved upwards in the middle of any six miles of its extent that may be chosen, as “science” puts it,— we owe much to—WATER! For it shows us the true form of the Earth. As is the water so must be the Earth in its general features. It is not a globe: but it is scientifically demonstrated to be just what the Scriptures declare that it is:—an immovable body, “Stretched out above the waters.” Modern Astronomical Theory, is false! [ref. 3.30]
In other words, the pamphlet rehashes the Bedford Canal experiment from Carpenter’s point of view. Wallace’s Wonderful Water was written and published while John Hampden resided in Chelmsford Gaol. So was Proctor’s “Planet Earth”, an attack on Lessons in Elementary Astronomy by astronomer and prolific science writer Richard Anthony Proctor, who was emerging as a major opponent of zeteticism. (We will meet Proctor later in this chapter.)
Hampden remained in Chelmsford Gaol for six months before friends secured his release. As soon as he got out of the slammer, Hampden turned the tables. In January 1876, he sued John Henry Walsh, stakeholder for the Bedford Canal wager, for his £500 deposit. The Gaming Act of 1845 had made all wagers null and void. Its ramifications

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were by this time well established in case law. In a decision handed down on January 17, Chief Justice Cockburn explained:
[T]hough, where a wager was illegal, no action could be brought either against the loser or stakeholder by the winner, a party who had deposited his money with the stakeholder was not in the same predicament. If, indeed, the event on which the wager depended had come off, and the money had been paid over, the authority to pay it not having been revoked, the depositor could no longer claim to have it back. But if, before the money was so paid over, the party depositing repudiated the wager and demanded his money back, he was entitled to have it restored to him, and could maintain an action to recover … [ref. 3.31]
Walsh was damned by a single, undisputed fact: Immediately upon receiving the decision, and long before Walsh delivered the stakes to Wallace, Hampden had demanded his money back. [ref. 3.32] Legally, Walsh should have complied, so judgment was given in favor of Hampden.
Wallace felt morally obligated to bear Walsh’s expenses in the suit. As Wallace still had a £600 claim against Hampden, and Hampden’s bankruptcy was obviously (and perhaps provably) fraudulent, an accommodation was reached whereby Wallace paid £120 and the costs of the suit and retained a claim of £410 against Hampden. He never got a penny.
The jubilant Hampden lost no time in launching his first major venture into flat-earth journalism. On May 1, 1876, he published the first issue of The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle and Scriptural Science Review, also identified as “Terra Firma,” “John Hampden’s Monthly,” and “Organ of the New Geographical Society.” The price was threepence, and the text was vintage Hampden. He opened the first issue with these words:
The very announcement of our name will sufficiently assure our readers as to what is the object, and what will be the principal subject of our small Monthly. With the first dip of our pen we throw down the gauntlet to the whole scientific world, and declare our intention to show, in the most unreserved manner, that all the geographers, all the astronomers, all the philosophers, all the scientific and educational professors of Europe are, on one particular subject, all wrong, all in error, all guilty of maintaining and upholding one of the most baseless theories, one of the most delusive fictions ever imposed on the ignorance and credulity of mankind. We shall prove from Scripture, from reason, and from fact, the World to be neither globe nor planet, neither rocket nor wheel, neither mystery nor myth, but a stationary and level plane, over which the sun, moon, and stars horizontally revolve, at very moderate distances above us. We shall contend for the maintenance and defence of the ancient systems of philosophy

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and Scriptural science against the modern theoretical astronomy; and for the resolute and persistent exposure of the unscrupulous falsehoods, and the fabulous and baseless theories of the royal professors; with constant and special reference to the Bedford Canal survey by one of their principal members, in the year 1870; unfolding step by step, the inexcusable blundering and the palpable iniquity of the whole affair, both morally and scientifically.
Hampden was as pugnacious as ever. He fully expected that his enemies would try to shut down The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle:
If there is neither sagacity nor intelligence enough among all our bigoted and vindictive opponents to silence our arguments before the issue of our second number, the disgraceful incompetence of the scientific professors and their literary hacks, will be most unsparingly denounced. We ask for no quarter, and it will be very shortly seen we intend giving none. [ref. 3.33]
He certainly didn’t. Hampden lashed out at his enemies from every page, and he had enemies everywhere. He blasted the religious publications of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, calling them “spurious, baseless, bastard, and infidel trash.” He fumed that the Committee of the Council on Education had refused to show his flat-earth map at an exhibition. He raged at spherical ministers of the Church of England. He called a planned expedition to the north pole “a disgraceful waste of the public money” and challenged scientists instead to circumnavigate the mythical south pole. He hinted strongly that Christ would return to deal with “hypocritical professor[s]” and other degenerates within five years.
Needless to say, Hampden had neither forgotten Wallace, nor was he cowed by the prospect of further prosecution for libel:
[I]n spite of all the law courts and lawyers in England we shall persist in publishing Mr. A. R. Wallace a defaulter in the sum of £725, till the last fraction of our claim against him as a man of honour has been cancelled. [ref. 3.34]
One of Hampden’s projects, promoted in The Truth Seeker’s Oracle, was his New Geographical Society, for which he published a prospectus:
Its object is the revival and re-establishment of the original and only true system of GEOGRAPHY and ASTRONOMY, of 5,500 years duration, designed by the Almighty Creator, believed in and maintained by all the inspired historians, and never doubted or disputed till mankind had abandoned their reverence for God’s word, and astrology and superstition had supplanted the faith in the evidence of their own senses. [ref. 3.35]
There is no evidence that anyone joined. Indeed, there’s no internal evidence that anyone even read The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle, though many

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flat-earthers undoubtedly did. The publication consisted exclusively of Hampden’s tirades and a few advertisements. There were no articles by other contributors, not so much as a letter-to-the-editor. Perhaps that explains why it lasted for only three issues.
Zetetics may not have flocked to the banner of the New Geographical Society or the subscription list of The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle and Scriptural Science Review, but Hampden’s court victory over Walsh and Wallace gave flat-earthism a tremendous psychological lift, especially coming as it did on the heels of his incarceration in Chelmsford Gaol. His fellow flat-earthers considered him vindicated, and zetetic discussions of the case rarely mention that the decision was based on a technicality rather than the outcome of the experiment. A flurry of action ensued. The year 1874 had passed without the publication of single zetetic work. Carpenter had published two in 1875, while Hampden was jailed. During the years 1876 through 1879, at least a dozen zetetic works were published, not counting The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle.
Empson Edward Middleton, last heard from in 1872, brought forth two pamphlets in 1876, The Great Liberator! The Great Solvent! The Great Liberator! and On the Variation of the Needle in Connection with the Shape of the Earth. That same year, he also published a map entitled Middleton’s Pioneer Map of the World (not to be confused with his Chart of the World, as Middleton was quick to caution potential buyers). In 1877, he followed with The Variation of the Needle in Connection with the Construction of the Globe on Navigator’s Course. It is difficult to determine his place in the flat-earth movement, if indeed he was linked to the movement by anything other than similar beliefs. A prolific writer, Middleton operated from isolation, sitting in the outskirts and firing his oddly-shaped darts of wisdom almost at random.
Indeed, Middleton often felt neglected, and it did not sit well with him. The heroic voyage of the Kate was not (he felt) properly recognized by the public, and literary critics were unkind to his partial translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. The latter was completely ignored, and he lamented about “the gross injustice shown to myself as a poet, after my having published a poetical work of such unapproachable excellence …” Some people can only get justice from themselves. Middleton never seemed to fit in anywhere, not even with his fellow flat-earthers. Being born of wealthy parents, he never learned to wait on himself, which no doubt made life more difficult for him. As he grew older, he continued to publish occasional flat-earth works, but he also sank deeper and deeper into eccentricity and obscurity.

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He died virtually unknown in 1916.
In the mid-1870s, Carpenter lived in Lewisham, a southeastern metropolitan borough of London, where he ran a book shop specializing in “works on Total Abstinence, Vegetarianism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Dietetics, Hydropathy, Phonography, etc.” [ref. 3.36] He also peddled Birley’s Syrup of Free Phosphorus at 10s. per Imperial pint (a three-month supply at a teaspoonful morning and night). And he continued to churn out flat-earth pamphlets.
Carpenter had developed a penchant for attacking astronomers and/or replying to critics. We previously mentioned his 1875 pamphlets Wallace’s Wonderful Water and Proctor’s “Planet Earth”. These were soon followed by Mr. Lockyer’s Logic (1876), The Delusion of the Day: or, Dyer’s Reply to “Parallax” (1877), Proctor, Lockyer, Wallace and Dyer, Confuted and Their Fallacies Exposed (1877), and A Reply to Professor Airy’s Ipswich Lectures to Workingmen (1878?). Wallace and Dyer need no further introduction, and we will meet Proctor shortly. Astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer was famous—and eventually knighted—for his investigations of the solar atmosphere. Sir George Biddell Airy was Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881.
We can form an idea of Carpenter’s method from The Delusion of the Day: or, Dyer’s Reply to “Parallax”, which is dedicated to the schoolmasters of Great Britain (their number included Dyer). The pamphlet is in the form of a dialogue between Frank (flat) and John (spherical). Frank is a tiresome quibbler whom Carpenter undoubtedly modeled on himself. John has brought his flat friend a copy of Dyer’s The Spherical Form of the Earth to examine. We can pick up Frank’s method from a single example:
Frank: Your schoolmaster goes on with his picking from “Parallax” in this way: —“'That from this northern centre the land diverges and stretches, out of necessity, towards the circumference, which must now be called THE SOUTHERN REGION, which is a vast circle, and not a pole or centre.'” Does “Parallax” say that the land stretches; or, does he say that it stretches out?
John: What nonsense it is for you to talk that way, Frank! Why, the comma is put in the wrong place, that’s all! [ref. 3.37]
A misplaced comma seems trivial enough, but Frank smells a plot. In the same quoted sentence, Dyer also changed “a circumference” to “the circumference.” Elsewhere in his book, he committed other sins greater and less, which Frank is determined to root out. By the end of the

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pamphlet, Frank has refuted Dyer and the globe as thoroughly as any creationist has ever refuted Darwin and evolution. Poor John grabs his book and exits in confusion.
Carpenter would soon grab his own books and follow suit. The “journeyman printer” (as he frequently styled himself) apparently had his hands full supporting his family with his book shop, shorthand tutoring, and printing. Beginning in the mid-1870s, England entered a prolonged period of economic hard times. The demands for her exports were decreasing. Steel was replacing iron for many uses, and British industry was slow to adapt. William Carpenter and his family emigrated to America in 1879, presumably seeking a more prosperous life.
Like the British economy, the zetetic movement was somewhat chaotic. Besides the visible zetetics, numerous shadowy figures were chipping away at the sphere from behind the scenes. Much zetetic energy was expended, but it was not well-directed. The flat-earthers needed a zealot with charisma and (more important) leadership ability to lead them out of the wilderness. Rowbotham lacked the leadership psychology, and he was slowly reducing his flat-earth activity to concentrate on selling Dr. Birley’s Syrup of Free Phosphorus. The only alternative candidates for leadership were Empson Edward Middleton, B. Charles Brough, and John Hampden. Middleton, as usual, was somewhere out in left field. Brough had vanished from the scene (unless he was the “Scaevola” who in 1877 published What Is the Shape of the Earth?). Opportunity was hammering on the door demanding a zetetic who could persuade, cajole, motivate, manipulate, organize, and generally make things happen. Only John Hampden answered.
Unfortunately, Hampden was no leader; a quintessential loner, he was utterly unfit for the role the fates thrust upon him. In his own way, he tried. He founded flat-earth organizations with every other dip of his pen and flat-earth journals when he had the money.
The zetetics had by now gained substantial recognition. Many provincial newspapers treated the controversy seriously and regularly printed zetetic letters-to-the-editor. Most “respectable” national publications turned up their journalistic noses and ignored the zetetics, as a proper Victorian might ignore an inebriate in the gutter, but there were exceptions. The English Mechanic and World of Science, the weekly tabloid-format science paper that was the model for Rufus Porter’s Scientific American, boasted an eclectic readership—scientists, scholars, engineers, clergymen,

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shopkeepers, mechanics, students, and freelance thinkers like Hampden. Written in a popular style, English Mechanic ran a conglomeration of feature articles, news stories, science notes, descriptions of new inventions, letters-to-the-editor, chemical recipes, craft tips, and whatever else the editors thought suitable and worthwhile. From the 1860s onward, English Mechanic took a skeptical but relatively tolerant attitude toward unorthodoxy, and flat-earthers, moon-nonrotators, perpetual motionists, and miscellaneous misfits had their doings reported and their letters published in its pages.
One who jousted with Hampden and Rowbotham in the pages of English Mechanic was Richard Anthony Proctor, who had risen from a humble background to become England’s best-known astronomical writer. Proctor was a trained astronomer, one of the first to map Mars, and the first to suggest that meteorite impacts caused the moon’s craters. He is best remembered, however, as a 19th century Asimov who produced respectable books at a prodigious rate. Proctor apparently began following the flat-earthers in October 1864, when he heard Rowbotham speak at Plymouth. Having listened to his arguments, examined his works, and analyzed some experiments he claimed to have performed, Proctor concluded that Rowbotham was a cynical fraud who didn’t believe his own theory. [note 3.8] He dismissed Hampden as a dupe of Rowbotham and a refugee from the puzzle factory. On this basis, Proctor exchanged barbs with Hampden and Rowbotham in the English Mechanic for years.
In 1881, Proctor founded Knowledge, a popular science magazine. A regular feature of Knowledge was “Our Paradox Corner,” a column devoted to examining unorthodoxies. Proctor regularly treated the flatearthers under this heading. In March 1883, he agreed to give Hampden space for rebuttal. Knowing Hampden’s propensity for billingsgate, Proctor warned him that only arguments from evidence would be printed and polemics would be mercilessly edited out. Hampden, of course, was constitutionally incapable of writing anything else. After several of his submissions were printed in severely edited form, Hampden wrote Proctor a blistering letter:
D S ,—I gave you most distinctly to understand that any exhibition of bad faith in the treatment of my articles would compel me to denounce and expose as severely as I have the conduct of that degraded swindler, Alfred Russel Wallace. I did not ask for the insertion of my notes; and you have no one to blame but yourself, when you find that your contemptible cowardice has entailed upon you a merciless retribution. Your daring to expunge four-fifths of my articles, under the lying pretence that they were denunciatory, is quite on a

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par with what my friends told me I should be sure to meet with at your hands. You have, I am sorry to say, a most unenviable reputation. Such I would not have for a thousand a year. By giving those lectures in the St. James’s Hall, you know that every shilling you take is obtained by false pretences. Every statement you make you know to be a lie; and, before you have finished them, I will compel you to confess it. No one but a mean, contemptible coward would dare to tie his opponent’s hands, and forbid him to say a single word in reference to his adversary’s statements. How can you wonder at the growing contempt your infidel science is universally provoking? It is you, and such liars and swindlers as Wallace that have brought the very name of science into ridicule and derision. Go and ask that degraded thief Wallace what his villainy has done for him; and before you are many months older you shall be as ashamed to show your face as he is. Remember my words. If others are afraid to tell you what you are, I am not. I have proved you to be a liar and a coward, and I shall so speak of you.

Yours, &c., J H

. [ref. 3.38]

Hampden was as good as his word. Six months later, he launched his third or fourth venture into flat-earth journalism [note 3.9] entitled Cosmos: A Geographical, Philosophical and Educational Review, Nautical Guide, & General Student’s Manual (hereafter Cosmos). The masthead further identified it above the title as “The only Controversial Paper published in the Kingdom” and below the title as “The organ of the Biblical Science Institute.” Cosmos was a small-format, twopenny publication of sixteen pages per issue. The premier (September 1883) issue had this fillip for Proctor:

A Mr. Richard Proctor has lately made himself more conspicuous as an advocate of the delusive frauds of the Copernican superstition; and an ample portion of each month’s space will be devoted to an exposure of this writer’s opinions, and the palpably reckless and shamefully false character of his attempts to illustrate the shape of the terrestrial and marine surfaces. [ref. 3.39]

As with The Truth-Seeker’s Oracle and Scriptural Science Review, all articles were written by Hampden, but he at least ran a few letters-to-theeditor. Mostly, Cosmos is page after page of tirades against Hampden’s usual whipping boys, except that astronomer Richard Proctor has almost completely replaced Wallace as the archdemon.

In the October 1883 issue, Hampden asked a curious question: “Where Are the Engineers?”

Does any rational person suppose that if the Astronomers and Geographers had any confidence in the reality of their mathematical device, they would not instantly appeal for a confirmation of their spherical theory to the surveyors

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and engineers, whose sole business it is to ascertain the exact shape of the various surfaces on which their railways and canals are constructed?
The question is curious because engineers have played prominent roles in virtually every unorthodox scientific movement of modern times. Yet flatearthism, to this point, could claim none! This lack would soon be remedied.
Once again, the flat-earthers were trying to get organized. In the December 1883 issue of Cosmos, Hampden reported that a Zetetic Society was then being formed. Prospective subscribers were instructed to write to “the President, The Zetetic Society, Welney House, Haverstock Hill, London, or the Editor, Cosmos, Balham, Surrey.” The former was Rowbotham’s home address, the latter Hampden’s. This time, a Zetetic Society was successfully formed, with Rowbotham as President and H. Ossipoff Wolfson, a recent emigrant from Russia, as founding Secretary. As for Cosmos, it folded immediately.
Little resulted from the Zetetic Society, partly because the earlier zetetic momentum had been largely lost and partly because of a serious defection. H. Ossipoff Wolfson had never doubted the earth’s sphericity until he met “Parallax” in September 1883. Overwhelmed by his forceful personality, Wolfson became Rowbotham’s enthusiastic convert and intimate acquaintance, so trusted that Rowbotham selected him as Secretary of the new Zetetic Society. After working with “Parallax” for six months, however, Wolfson was severely disillusioned. He had looked into the Hampden–Wallace wager and found the zetetic explanation wanting; furthermore, he was severely troubled by Rowbotham’s claims for his patent medicine. He went to Proctor and offered to expose Rowbotham in the pages of Knowledge. Proctor ran the first installment in the March 28, 1884 issue.
Unfortunately, Wolfson wrote like a Russian novelist. After two wordy and convoluted installments, he was still backing up to get started. At that point Proctor received a letter from Howard Rumney, Rowbotham’s solicitor, threatening legal action. Proctor was convinced that the threat was a bluff, but the series never resumed.
Rowbotham had by this time almost ceased his flat-earth activities. He was now about 68 years old, [note 3.10] and perhaps his health was failing in spite of his phosphorized medicine. The second edition of Earth Not a Globe, published in 1873, was his last published word on zetetic

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astronomy. [note 3.11] For several years afterward, he had promoted The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, Zetetically Considered, but the book was never published. Indeed, though some of his works were reprinted, he never published anything else new, with the possible exception of Phosphorus as Discovered and Prepared by Dr. Birley, a pamphlet published in 1881.
The fact is that Rowbotham had made a bundle on Dr. Birley’s Syrup of Free Phosphorus. He had long ago established a critical mass of regular users. The stuff was advertised in cheap tabloids, and he had established a distribution system for it. Several of his faithful followers—including Hampden, Carpenter, and Akester (who features in Chapter 4) had sold it for him. Charles Watkyns de Lacy Evans, the surgeon who replaced Wolfson as Secretary of the Zetetic Society, had written a book extolling the virtues of free phosphorus. [note 3.12] The nostrum was popular enough so that it would outlive Rowbotham by at least 20 years. At this point, all he had to do was let the money roll in.
Rowbotham’s relationship with other flat-earthers is unclear. He never mentioned a close associate in his works, and (except for Wolfson) no follower ever claimed to be close to him. He obviously resented the publicity Hampden got from the Bedford Canal experiment, and he was miffed because many thought Hampden was the famous “Parallax.” In a letter to Knowledge published during the Wolfson exposé, Hampden touched on his personal relationship with Rowbotham:
His conduct to me individually has been the very reverse of generous or equitable. Some twelve or fifteen years ago, when “Parallax” had not, perhaps, as many sixpences as he now has pounds, I paid him some £130 or £140, when I thought of placing my son as his pupil, besides spending an additional £30 in advertising his book by a pamphlet of extracts, entirely trusting to his honour to make me some compensation, if the time should ever arrive, when he should be able to do so. All the return I have had has been one pint bottle of his phosphorised medicine, and the privilege of having my name identified with the grand cause of which he is undoubtedly the founder. [ref. 3.40]
“Parallax” seems to have had a number of eccentricities in addition to the more obvious ones, and one of them contributed to his demise. He had a fear of trains, and as he grew older he refused to ride them. Wealthy friends and patients seeking his company would send their carriages for him. In the autumn of 1884, he fell getting out of a cab. First weakened, then incapacitated, his phosphorized medicine couldn’t save him. Samuel Birley Rowbotham died December 23, 1884 at age 68, well short the

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patriarchal longevity promised his customers, and just shy of the Biblical threescore and ten. He was buried in the Crystal Palace District Cemetery on December 31 with the following inscription on his tombstone:
SAMUEL ROWBOTHAM, M.D., Ph.D. (Parallax)
Founder of Zetetic Philosophy, Died suddenly, Dec. the 23rd, 1884. “The deepest truths with reason keen
Thy logic could uphold Thy master mind with science fought,
Those truths but to unfold. In ages yet to come Mankind
Will glorify thy name, And none will shine with brighter rays Upon the scroll of fame.” W . [ref. 3.41]
Rowbotham’s death must have shocked users of his longevity-producing nostrum, but it probably had little effect on the movement he had founded. In March 1885, Hampden launched Parallax, a journal dedicated to the master’s memory. It opened with the following statement from the editor:
PARALLAX is dedicated to the memory of, and designed to perpetuate the principles, of the late SAMUEL BIRLEY ROWBOTHAM, better known by the nom de plume “Parallax,” the original founder of the ZETETIC Society, and one of the most genuine philosophers of modern times; who, for upwards of thirty years, maintained his ground as the unconquered champion of the greatest cause ever entrusted to the agency of man. Edited by his grateful disciple and fellow-worker, JOHN HAMPDEN. [ref. 3.42]
In the premier issue of Parallax, Hampden explained his principal theoretical contribution to zetetic astronomy, which was embodied in his “Circular Chart of the World:”
The circular plane is artificially, or for convenience sake, divided into 24 meridians of longitude, and 7 of latitude; the equator being the centre one. The parallels of latitude must be exactly equal to the distance between any two meridians, or radii of longitude on the equator; or, 900 miles. So that from the central north to the navigable boundary of the southern circumference is about 6,900 miles, rather under than over.
The Sun travels from one meridian to another, irrespective of distance, from east to west, in one hour. … The Sun itself never extends its orbit beyond 1,350 miles north or south of the equator …
The diameter of the Sun’s June or northern solstice, is 4,200 miles. That is the mean or equinoxial orbit, is 6,900 miles; that is the December or southern

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solstice, is 9,600 miles; or, a difference of 2,700 miles between each. Each parallel or circuit of latitude is, of course, artificially divided into 360 degrees; which makes it impossible to give more than 57½ degrees radius from the equator to the northern centre, or (geometrically) to the southern circumference. [ref. 3.43]
The last claim—that it is “57½ degrees” from equator to north pole—is puzzling at first, but it provides insight into Hampden’s mental processes. Conventionally, a nautical mile is defined as a minute of arc on the earth’s surface, and a degree equals 60 minutes. Hampden would hear nothing of arcs, but he accepted that a degree of latitude is 60 miles. He then asserted (on what grounds he said not) that the diameter of the equator is 6900 miles, [note 3.13] meaning that from equator to pole is 3450 miles. Then 3450/60 = 57½, Q.E.D. On the Hampden scale, 45 north latitude is about 70 degrees 26 minutes conventional latitude.
Parallax lasted only three or four issues. [ref. 3.44] On September 4, 1886, barely a year after Parallax folded, Hampden launched his last and most successful journal, The Earth; Scripturally, Rationally, and Practically Described. A Geographical, Philosophical, and Educational Review, Nautical Guide, and General Student’s Manual. Perhaps he finally understood what it takes to make a successful periodical. This time, he had a network of agents and correspondents, and he ran contributions by other writers.
The flat-earth movement was on a roll, if one can believe Hampden. He based his judgment on the quantity and quality of the opposition:
During the past three years, up to the month of July 1885, no less than between 25 and 30 various publications have been issued by nine or ten gentlemen of education and intelligence, in support of the plane or New Geographical system; whereas, but two trashy pamphlets have issued from our opponents— one written by a retired middle-class schoolmaster, and the other by a ship’s cement maker of Southampton! [ref. 3.45]
The schoolmaster was, of course, Dyer, and the ship’s cement maker was Captain George Peacock. They were, of course, only the human opposition. Hampden made no bones about his real opponent:
The Zetetic or Socratic Society and Biblical Defence Association has earned the everlasting gratitude or every independent truth-seeker and Christian professor by its detection and exposure of that Satanic device and Pagan blasphemy of a round and revolving globe, which sets Scripture, reason, and facts at defiance, and has made the whole world wonder at the usurping dominion of an imposture which can only be overthrown when the Arch fiend himself shall

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have been bound in everlasting chains, and this curse shall cease to reduce mankind below the level of ‘the beasts that perish.’ [ref. 3.46]
The year 1887 marked 50 years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and England was awash in Jubilee sentimentality, nostalgia, and hoopla. In editorially congratulating Victoria, Hampden expressed the pious hope that she would do something about the spherical fraud.
Her Majesty has to submit to the painful and humiliating reflection that during the whole of the last fifty years, she has been reigning over a nation of senseless idolaters of one of the grossest misrepresentations, one of the most baseless delusions, one of the most religiously and commercially pernicious systems of education that was ever imposed on the ignorance and credulity of mankind. [ref. 3.47]
As had so many others, the queen ignored him.
Hampden was now pushing 70. With Rowbotham dead and Carpenter off in America, he had inherited the Zetetic Society. He called himself Secretary of the Zetetic Society and issued publications in its name, but it was essentially dead. Hampden had lost none of his fire, but perhaps he was tiring a little. The Earth; Scripturally, Rationally, and Practically Described folded with the September 1, 1888 issue. Biweekly at first, then monthly, Hampden had produced 27 issues, amounting to some 150,000 words of text. It was his last publication.
So what kind of man was John Hampden? For one thing, he was very much a loner, and he seems never to have had a close ally in the flat-earth movement. Rowbotham apparently had considered him a buffoon who had stolen some of his thunder. Carpenter was an ally and sometime associate, but they were not close. Hampden was the only regular contributor to most of his periodicals, and he often brushed off correspondents. If he was as prickly in his dealings with his fellow flatearthers as he was with others, he probably didn’t have a lot of friends. Indeed, there are hints that Hampden’s relationship with other zetetics was not ideal. For instance, James Naylor and William Bathgate were avid flat-earthers who appeared in The Zetetic in 1872 and 1873 and then dropped from sight. As we will see in the next chapter, both reappeared twenty years later as enthusiastic as before. Where were they in the interim? Why don’t their names appear in any of Hampden’s publications?
Despite his loner instincts, Hampden could found a flat-earth society with

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a stroke of his pen. At various times he claimed to represent the New Geographical Society, the Society for the Restoration and Extension of Biblical Cosmography, the Biblical Science Defence Association, the Christian Philosophical Institute, the Biblical Science Institute, the Philosophical Society of Christendom, and the Zetetic or Socratic Society and Biblical Defence Association. One can only wonder how many of these organizations ever had more than one member.
Hampden’s theoretical contributions to zetetic astronomy were limited at best. His main innovation, the idea that the distance from the equator to the pole is only 57½ degrees, was not generally accepted by other zetetics. Though his writings often seem to be unbroken strings of pejoratives, they are not without substance. Several themes obsessed Hampden:
(1) The Bedford Canal Experiment. He railed about it to the end of his life.
(2) Isaac Newton. Hampden was convinced that Sir Isaac Newton was duped by his own mathematics. A legitimate question in the philosophy of science is this: What connection exists between mathematical abstractions and the real world? Hampden did not recognize any that he could not personally understand.
(3) The indefensibility of the globe. Most scientists declined to argue with him about it, so Hampden assumed the globular model was indefensible. He always insisted there is absolutely no proof for it.
(4) The schools. Hampden was outraged because the schools taught the conventional theory, and he raged against their “pasteboard globes” and “half-witted science.”
(5) The Satanic nature of modern astronomy.
(6) The venality and stupidity of scientists. Hampden considered modern science and its practitioners equally corrupt; therefore, he rejected such innovations as gravitation, magnetism, and atmospheric pressure.
(7) The apostasy of the Established Church. Hampden apparently never left the Church of England to join a nonconformist sect, but he was extremely unhappy with conventional views on theology and the Bible.
(8) The Bible. All true science comes from the Bible.

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(9) The Creation. Hampden insisted that the Genesis creation story is meaningless if the earth is an insignificant speck of dust suspended in an immeasurable universe; why then was it created before the infinity of stars?
(10) The End of the World. Hampden expected Jesus to return momentarily.
The parallels with modern creationists are striking. Eliminate the Bedford Canal Experiment, which was Hampden’s personal tragedy, and substitute Darwin for Newton, evolution for astronomy, and mainstream religion for the Established Church, and you have the outline for several of Henry Morris’s best-selling creationist books.
Unorthodoxies multiply like rabbits. The unorthodox seem to reason that delusion knows no boundaries. Again using modern creationists as an example, their doctrine holds that conventional scientists are deluded about biology, geology, geophysics, astronomy, cosmology, geochronology, chemical thermodynamics, and linguistics. If so, it is not unreasonable to assume they are also deluded about relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and all of particle physics. [note 3.14] In this light, it is hardly surprising that, in addition to his flat-earthism, Hampden was a wellspring of scientific unorthodoxy. For example:
(1) The calendar. Hampden claimed the calendar should give June 32 days, December 33 days, and all the rest 30 days. “This is not an arbitrary or ideal division; it is in a literal and exact accordance with the Almighty’s decision, declared and unmistakably demonstrated by the annual course of the sun.” [ref. 3.48]
(2) Squaring the circle. One of the seven traditional follies of science was attempting to find an exact ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle (“squaring the circle”). [note 3.15] This amounts to determining the value of pi by geometric construction, an impossible feat. Hampden was unconcerned with impossibilities, and he squared the circle as follows:
Q. What is the exact proportion between the diameter and the circumference?
A. As 115 is to 360, so is the diameter to the circumference of any circle. Now, we know the circumference of the Sun’s mean circuit to be 21,600 miles, and we are equally sure that the diameter of such a circle can be no more than 6,900 miles, as measured across a flat surface. [ref. 3.49]

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Thus, by fiat, Hampden made pi = 360/115 (i.e. 72/23, or approximately 3.130435), and used this value to calculate that a circle with a circumference of 21,600 miles would have a diameter of 6,900 miles.
(3) The compass. According to Hampden, the compass needle receives its north–south orientation from electricity caused by the sun circling above the earth. This fact had not been previously discovered “because the bigots who call themselves scientists had not the remotest conception of the sun’s motion in its circular and horizontal orbit!” [ref. 3.50]
(4) Atmospheric pressure. “[W]e shall probably amaze our readers more than ever, when we assure them that the positively asserted fact of atmospheric pressure is as preposterously false and fabulous as the rest!” [ref. 3.51]
(5) The period of a pendulum. “The pendulum, if honestly used, does not vibrate quicker at one spot than another …” [ref. 3.52]
(6) The midnight sun in the Antarctic. “The sun is never seen the whole of the twenty-four hours in the southern regions; and no one has ever ventured to argue that it has been.” [ref. 3.53]
(7) Galileo. “[T]hat insane fanatic and apostate, Galileo … with that pitiable cowardice which uniformly accompanies conscious guilt, recanted every statement he had made, and confessed that every word he had uttered, was a lie!” [note 3.16] [ref. 3.54]
(8) Scholarship. “[A]n educated scholar from a classical college, is fit only to be a curate, or a fox hunter, or a Pall Mall lounger.” [ref. 3.55]
Some might detect in the last statement a whiff of anti-intellectualism. Hampden considered conventional scientists fools and liars, but he never claimed his own enlightenment made him something special. Hampden never considered himself the chosen instrument of the Almighty, as do some modern fundamentalists. He rose above other men because of their own blindness, not through his own special relationship with God. He found the flat earth was perfectly reasonable, but he would have been astonished to hear a preacher claim his personal prayers had deflected a hurricane.
Hampden lived in a state of perpetual righteous indignation. His most cherished ideas were generally rejected by the human race, and he was

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infuriated by this universal stupidity. He had an unsinkable sense of his own self-worth, and nothing he could do—deceiving Wallace into accepting Carpenter as referee, welshing on a bet he had instigated, perpetrating a fraudulent bankruptcy, signing utterly insincere apologies to Wallace—nothing could diminish his image of himself as a paragon of rectitude. It would be inaccurate to call him a hypocrite, for hypocrisy requires at least a glimmer of self-consciousness. Hampden had none.
Consider the little pamphlet entitled The Rampart of Steel or a Fancys Sketch for a Permanent Coast Militia and an Army of Reserve by MajorGeneral John Hampden, published in Canterbury in 1852. The author represented himself as a military man of some experience. The Rampart of Steel contains a single autobiographical passage:
The writer is no grumbler or alarmist—has no fear of a fair stand-up fight, and never had. To this add, he has no interest whatever in making any increase to the national force, naval or military. With most of the ports and battle fields of Europe, he is well acquainted: he has seen the field of Hastings, and his name appears in the battle roll of the victors; but at 62 he would lend a hand to “fight it over again,” and with anything like equal numbers and a few field works, would have no fear of the result.
Zetetic John Hampden was 33 (not 62) in 1852, almost certainly too young to have been a Major-General, even in the bad old days when military commissions were bought and sold. Besides, the wooden words of The Rampart of Steel lack the verve and venom characteristic of his authentic writings. While he never explicitly claimed to be author of The Rampart of Steel, Hampden regularly advertised it among works undoubtedly his own, and he is generally credited with writing it. [note 3.17]
Hampden’s place in history was assured without The Rampart of Steel. His authentic literary output is a monument to the flat-earth movement. Though he never wrote a full-length book, his collected pamphlets would make two substantial volumes, his published letters-to-the-editor another, and his periodicals (he wrote most of the articles himself) a couple more. Though sometimes dreary, he was never dull, and when he was steamed (which was most of the time), he was a brilliant polemicist.
As long as he lived, John Hampden periodically plagued Wallace. After the Walsh lawsuit of 1876, the great naturalist resolutely ignored him. Unlike Hampden, who never doubted his own righteousness, Wallace came to view his part in the Old Bedford Canal wager as an ethical lapse for which he paid dearly in time, money, and embarrassment. His

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autobiography reveals that Wallace developed a perverse sort of affection for his old Nemesis. Sometime around 1885, Hampden stopped at Wallace’s house at Frith Hill, Godalming, when Wallace had some friends over for lunch. Wallace’s immediate reaction upon meeting Hampden at the door was to get rid of him as quickly as possible. Later, he regretted not inviting him to join them for lunch. So it was that Wallace, hardly a Christian, developed a genuinely Christian attitude toward Hampden, while Hampden, the avowed Christian, never forgave and never forgot.
Judgmental in the extreme and vindictive to a fault, Hampden was one of those self-infatuated people who create and inhabit realities independent of the natural world. His writings never reveal the slightest suspicion that any of his opinions might be wrong. In his last years, he apparently became obsessed with the impending End of the World. For John, the End came on January 22, 1891, in the form of severe bronchitis. The flatearth movement has not produced another like him.

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