It doesn’t work like that, and you know it. It is not expected to prove a negative, as your mentor Tom pointed out to me. You claim he was a doctor, then the burden of proof is on you.
Please supply proof that Rowbotham had gained a doctorate.
As for the references to him being called a doctor by other authors, i am willing to bet they were the likes of Blount, Smith, Holden, Dowie, Hampden, Winship eat al, lackeys and blindly following his unscientific and poorly done experiments, and no doubt also bringing in the coin by selling books, and charging people to attend lectures, as Charlatan Rowbotham did.
I mention that his experiments were poor;lay done, and made massive jumps to conclusions, as i am in the process of reading EnaG and have yet to see any evidence of real experiments, other than a series of annecdotal third hand eye witness accounts, or a series of observations (i cant call them experiments, as experiments are scientific, repeatable and produce results, not wildly inaccurate observations) that come to some wild conclusions as the very basis of them are wrong. He mixes Nautical miles with Sttute miles, he does not adequately account for refraction, knows little about magnetism, yet makes wild claims about each, all with one aim. To prove his theory.
He starts of with a closed mind, ie the earth is flat, and not a globe, and makes up a series of observations to give credence to his already formed opinion, the very thing that he talks about in Chapter 1
“None can doubt that by making special experiments, and collecting manifest and undeniable facts, arranging them in logical order, and observing what is naturally and fairly deducible therefrom, the result must be more consistent and satisfactory than the contrary method of framing a theory or system--assuming the existence and operation of causes of which there is no direct and practical evidence. “. ( Ref Charlatan Rowbotham 1881)
How can one look at his observations on magnetic fields, and explanation of a “dipping needle” on the horizon and give any any credence to what he says when he gets a very fundamental basic proinciple of magnetism wrong, and then extrapolate that exponentially to disprove the world is round, when if you in fact use the correct magnetic flux lines on his diagram it proves the world MUST BE round!
When you suggest he might be a MD, then you are right to acknowledge that he has no knowledge of the physics, navigation, or magnetism, and are you referring to the Rowbotham who claimed he could cure everything, and sold an abundance of snake oil, and fake cures, for profit? Certainly no MD, but as you pointy out records were not well kept and any quack could call himself an M.D., and gullible, uneducated and desperate people would bear suckeered into his web!