His lectures continued and concerned citizens addressed letters to the Astronomer Royal seeking rebuttals for his claims. His book Zetetic Astronomy: The Earth not a Globe appeared in 1864. He is not known to have held any medical degrees and his professions are named at different times "chemist, physician, journalist, soap boiler". He patented a number of inventions, including a "life-preserving cylindrical railway carriage". Samuel Birley", living in a beautiful 12-roomed house, selling the secrets for prolonging human life and curing every disease imaginable. He was also alleged to be using the name "Dr. He was named responsible for other deaths using his quack cures of phosphorus. He was named in numerous cases of wrongful deaths, including a "death by misadventure" for accidentally poisoning one of his own children.
In 1861 when he was 46, Rowbotham married a 15 year old girl (with whom he was living at the time of the marriage) and settled in London, producing 15 known children, of whom only four survived.
In 1856, Rowbotham married for a second time and had two children, one of whom died in infancy. In fact, only half the lantern was visible, yet Rowbotham claimed his opponents were wrong and that it proved the Earth was indeed flat so that many Plymouth folk left the Hoe agreeing that "some of the most important conclusions of modern astronomy had been seriously invalidated". His opponents had claimed that only the lantern of the Eddystone Lighthouse, some 14 miles out to sea, would be visible. Proctor, a writer on astronomy, and proceeded to the beach where a telescope had been set up. When finally pinned down to a challenge in Plymouth in 1864 by allegations that he wouldn't agree to a test, Rowbotham appeared on Plymouth Hoe at the appointed time, witnessed by Richard A. However, as he persisted in filling halls by charging sixpence a lecture, his quick-wittedness and debating skills were honed so much that he could "counter every argument with ingenuity, wit and consummate skill". He took a little time to learn his trade, running away from a lecture in Blackburn when he couldn't explain why the hulls of ships disappeared before their masts when sailing out to sea. After measuring a lack of curvature on the long straight drainage ditches of the Bedford Levels in his first Bedford Level experiment, he was convinced of the flatness of the Earth and began to lecture on the topic. Rowbotham started out as an organiser of an Owenite commune in The Fens, where he formulated his ideas about the Earth.
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