Life
Carpenter was born on 29 Oct 1813 in Exeter, the eldest son of Dr Lant Carpenter and his wife, Anna Carpenter (née Penn). His father was an important Unitarian preacher who influenced a "rising generation of Unitarian intellectuals, including James Martineau and the Westminster Review's John Bowring." From his father, Carpenter inherited a belief in the essential lawfulness of the creation: this meant that natural causes were the explanation of the world as we find it. William embraced this "naturalistic cosmogeny" as his starting point.
Carpenter was apprenticed to the eye surgeon John Bishop Estlin, who was also the son of a Unitarian minister, and accompanied him to the West Indies in 1833. He attended medical classes at University College London (1834–35), and then went to the University of Edinburgh (1835–39), where he received his MD in 1839. Later, in 1861, he also received an LL.D. from the University of Edinburgh.
On his resignation in 1879, Carpenter was appointed CB in recognition of his services to education. He died on 19 Nov 1885 in London, from burn injuries occasioned by the accidental upsetting of the fire heating a vapour bath he was taking. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: William Benjamin Carpenter
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