Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/456

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Carpenter
394
Carpenter

in 1886 for North Bristol, but in each case unsuccessfully. Carpenter rendered important services to the British Medical Association, where he was president of the south-eastern branch in 1872, a member of the council in 1873, president of the council 1878–81, and president of the section of public health at the Worcester meeting in 1882. In 1860 he began to attend the archbishops of Canterbury at Addington, where he was medical adviser in succession to Archbishops Sumner, Longley, Tait, and Benson. He was an examiner at the Society of Apothecaries, and he acted as examiner in public health at the universities of Cambridge and London.

He died on 27 Jan. 1892, and is buried in Croydon cemetery. A bust by E. Roscoe Mullins, executed for the Croydon Literary and Scientific Institution, is in the public hall at Croydon. He married, on 22 June 1853, Margaret Jane, eldest daughter of Evan Jones, marshal of the high court of admiralty, by whom he had three sons and one daughter.

Dr. Carpenter believed that healthy homes made healthy people, and his life was devoted to the conversion of this belief into practice. His activity extended over the whole range of sanitary science. He felt the deepest interest in the application of sewage to the land, which he held to be the proper way of dealing with it, and as chairman of the Croydon sewage farm he made it a model which was afterwards widely copied. He studied the general sanitary conditions of Croydon with great care, he established baths, and ventilated the sewers.

He promoted in every way in his power the Habitual Drunkards Act of 1879; and in 1878, when he was orator of the Medical Society of London, he took 'Alcoholic Drinks' as the subject of his oration. He was for many years chairman of the Whitgift foundation at Croydon.

Besides many small works and papers upon sanitary medicine and alcoholic drinks, Carpenter published 'The Principles and Practice of School Hygiene,' London, 1887, 12mo.

[Leyland's Contemporary Medical Men, 18S8, vol. i.; information kindly given by Dr. Arthur Bristowe Carpenter.]

D’A. P.

CARPENTER, PHILIP HERBERT (1852–1891), palæontologist and zoologist, fourth son of William Benjamin Carpenter [q. v.], was born in London on 6 Feb. 1852. Educated at University College school, he was at an early age drawn by home influences to the study of natural science. In his seventeenth year he accompanied his father in the Lightning on a dredging and sounding cruise to the Faroes, and next year in the Porcupine, in which vessel during the following summer he went to the Mediterranean, acting as a scientific assistant on these cruises. In 1871 he obtained a scholarship in natural science at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he more especially studied geology and biology, obtaining a first class in the natural science tripos of 1874. He proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1878, and of Sc.D. in 1884.

After quitting Cambridge and making a voyage in the Valorous to Disco Bay in 1875 for scientific purposes, he went to Würzburg and worked under Professor Semper. While there, in consequence of a controversy which had arisen concerning his father's investigations into the structure of crinoids, he specially studied that group, and made important discoveries which soon placed him in the front rank of authorities on that subject. On his return to England in 1877 he was appointed an assistant master at Eton in special charge of the biological teaching. With many men such duties would have practically put an end to original research, but Carpenter's enthusiasm and indomitable energy enabled him to carry out a remarkable amount. The rich collection of echinodermata brought back by the Challenger in 1876 proved an additional stimulus, and from that time onwards to his death a constant stream of papers flowed from his pen on echinoderms, and especially on crinoid morphology. These are about fifty in number, and to them we must add his two chief works, the ‘Report on the stalked Crinoids, collected by the Challenger,’ published in 1884, and that on the free-swimming forms in 1888. Besides these he was joint author (with Mr. R. Etheridge, jun.) of the catalogue of the Blastoidea in the British Museum, and made important investigations into another fossil order, the Cystidea.

The characteristic of his work, apart from its thoroughness and accuracy, was that it was conducted on the following principle: ‘The only way to understand fossils properly is to gain a thorough knowledge of the morphology of their living representatives. These, on the other hand, seem to me incompletely known, if no account is taken of the life forms which have preceded them.’

Carpenter also largely aided in the section dealing with the echinoderms in Nicholson and Lydekker's ‘Palæontology’ (1889), wrote a popular account of the same group in Cassell's ‘Natural History’ (1883), and was, in addition, ever ready to help fellow