OWEN, Sir John, 1 Baronet (eld. son of Joseph Lord of Pembroke, d. 15 June 1801). b. Pembroke 1776; barrister I.T. 23 May 1800; M.P. Pembrokeshire 1806–41; M.P. Pembroke district of burgh 1841 to death; assumed by R.L. name of Owen in lieu of Lord on succeeding to estates of sir Hugh Owen on 23 Aug. 1809; cr. baronet 12 Jany. 1813; governor of Milford Haven 14 June 1821 to death; lord lieut. of Pembrokeshire 1824 to death. d. Taynton house, near Newent, Gloucestershire 6 Feb. 1861.
OWEN, John. V. of Thrussington, Leicestershire 1845 to death; rural dean 1853; translated from the Latin of John Calvin Commentaries on the twelve minor Prophets 1846; On Paul to the Romans 1849; On Jeremiah and Lamentations 1850; On Paul to the Hebrews 1853; On the Catholic Epistles 1855; from the Latin of Martin Luther Commentary on the Galatians 1845; from the Welsh of W. Rees The Mercy seat 1861; author of A memoir of rev. Daniel Rowlands 1840; Lectures on popery 1843; Memoirs of rev. T. Jones 1851; Church government according to the New Testament 1852. d. 1867.
OWEN, John (son of the captain of a small vessel). b. Crane st. Chester 14 Nov. 1821; apprenticed to Messrs. Powell and Edwards, cutlers; became a professional musician 1844; organist successively of Lady Huntingdon’s chapel, S. Paul’s, Boughton, St. Bridgets, St. Mary’s, and the Welsh church, all in Chester; known in Wales as Owain Alaw 1863; won the prize for the best anthem at the royal Eisteddfod of Rhuddlan 1850; edited Gems of Welsh melody, 2 series 1862, 4 series 1873; composed The prince of Wales cantata 1862; The festival of Wales cantata 1866; The Welsh harp, national songs 1880; wrote glees, songs, and anthems in Welsh musical magazines; his name is attached to upwards of 25 pieces of music. d. Lorne st. Chester 30 Jany. 1883. Y Geninen, Carnarvon (1883) 124–30; The musical world 3 Feb. 1883 p. 74.
OWEN, John Blackman. In the service of Great Eastern railway from 1836, secretary 1850 to death. d. 17 Upper Hornsey Rise, London 31 July 1873. bur. Great Northern cemetery, Southgate 7 Aug.
OWEN, John Pickard. b. Goodge st. Tottenham court road, London 5 Feb. 1832; received baptism by immersion in a pond near Dorking; joined the church of Rome; became a Deist, but afterwards a believer in christianity; author of The fair haven, a work in defence of the miraculous element in our Lord’s ministry upon earth, by J. P. Owen, ed. by W. B. Owen 1873, memoir pp. 1–70. d. 15 March 1872.
OWEN, Jonathan. b. 3 April 1820; billiard player; teacher of billiards; marker in annual matches between Oxford and Cambridge many years; known as Oxford Jonathan; father of Fred Owen, the actor. d. Craven Buildings, Strand, London 26 March 1879. Bell’s Life in London 29 March 1879 p. 2.
OWEN, Joseph Butterworth (5 son of Jacob Owen, architect, Dublin 1778–1870). b. Portsmouth 22 July 1809; educ. St. Paul’s gram. sch. near Portsmouth, and at St. John’s coll. Camb., B.A. 1829, M.A. 1832; C. of Walsall Wood, Staffs. 1835; in charge of Farthingstone, Northants. 1837; P.C. of St. Mary, Bilston, Staffs. 1838–54, also preacher at St. George’s ch. Wolverhampton, on leaving received a service of plate valued at £1,000; incumbent of St. John’s chapel, Bedford row, London 1854–7, when the chapel fell in and the ruins were taken down; preached in Store st. music hall 1857; preacher at St. Swithin’s, Cannon st. 1856; chairman of directors of Royal Polytechnic soc. 1857 to death; V. of St. Jude’s, Chelsea 1858 to death; lecturer St. John’s, Wapping 1858 to death; author of Six plain sermons on the Sabbath 1835; Six lectures on the rite of confirmation 1840; The pottery schoolmaster, a biographical sketch of Silas Even 1852; Diligent in business, a memoir of G. B. Thornycroft 1856; Business without christianity, with statistics and facts 1856, 2 ed. 1858; The mischief and miseries of temper 1857; Cliques, social, professional, and religious, with sketches of the Latch-Key and the Lock-out-the-Town’s libel 1864; The homes of scripture 1865; Men’s infirmities, natural and acquired 1865. d. 40 Cadogan place, London 18 May 1872. bur. Brompton cemetery 24 May. Lectures and sermons by J. B. Owen (1873), memoir pp. 1–96; R. Simms’s Bibliotheca Staffordiensis (1874) 339–40.
OWEN, Sir Richard (younger son of Richard Owen, West India merchant 1754–1809). b. Brock st. Lancaster 20 July 1804; educ. Lancaster gr. sch. 1810–20; apprenticed to Leonard Dickson of Lancaster, surgeon 11 Aug. 1820; matric. at univ. of Edinb. Oct. 1824, where he founded with Gavin Milroy the Hunterian society; studied at St. Bartholomew’s hospital 1825–6; M.R.C.S. 18 Aug. 1826; surgeon at 11 Cook’s court, Carey st. Lincoln’s inn fields 1826; lecturer on comparative anatomy at St. Bartholomew’s 1829; assistant conservator to Hunterian museum at royal college of surgeons 1827, joint conservator 1842, sole conservator 1849; started the Zoological Magazine Jany. 1833, sold it in July; F.R.S. 13 Dec. 1834, royal medallist 1846, Copley medallist 1851; Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology at royal college of surgeons April 1836 to 1856; Wollaston gold medallist of Geological Society 1838; corresponding member of Institute of France 1839; helped to found Royal microscopical society 1839, president 1840–1; granted civil list pension of £200, 25 Nov. 1842; resided at Sheen lodge, Richmond park, lent to him by the queen 1852 to death; juror of Paris exhibition 1855, created a knight of the Legion of Honour; devised the exhibition of models of extinct animals at the Crystal palace 1855; superintendent of natural history department of British museum 26 May 1856 to 1883, with £800 a year; new Natural history museum at South Kensington opened 1881; Fullerian professor of physiology in the Royal institution 1859–61; president of British association at Leeds 1858; Rede lecturer at Cambridge 1859; awarded the prix Cuvier of the French academy 1857; went to Egypt 1869, 1871, 1872, and 1874; C.B. 3 June 1873, K.C.B. 5 Jany. 1884; granted another civil list pension of £100, 26 Feb. 1884; the first gold medallist of the Linnæan society 1888; author of Odontography, text and atlas, 2 vols. 1840–5; Lectures on the comparative anatomy and physiology of the invertebrate animals 1843, 2 ed. 1855; A history of British fossil mammals and birds 1846; A history of British fossil reptiles, 4 vols. 1849–84; On the anatomy of vertebrates 3 vols. 1866–8; his name is attached to upwards of 50 works. d. Sheen lodge, Richmond park 18 Dec. 1892. bur. Ham churchyard, portrait by Holman Hunt exhibited in Grosvenor gallery 1881. Rev. R. Owen’s Life of Richard Owen, 2 vols. (1884) 4 portraits; British medical journal 19 Dec. 1892 special supplement; Maguire’s Portraits of distinguished naturalists, Ipswich (1852) portrait; Walford’s Representative men (1868) portrait; Nature xxii 577–79 (1892) portrait; Modern thought March 1883 pp. 97–101; The coward conscience by Charles Adams (1882) passim; Graphic xxviii 260 (1883) portrait; Vanity Fair 1 March 1873 p. 71 portrait; Daily Graphic 19 Dec. 1892 p. 8 portrait; Strand Mag. ii 274 (1891) 3 portraits.
OWEN, Robert (6 child of Robert Owen of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, saddler). b. Newtown 14 May 1771; employed by James Mc Guffog, draper, Stamford, Northants 1780–5; a machine maker at Manchester, then a yarn spinner; manager of Mr. Drinkwater’s spinning business, Manchester 1790–4; founded the Chorlton Twist company 1794–5; he and his partners purchased David Dale’s mills at New Lanark on the falls of the Clyde for £60,000, which he managed from about 1 Jany. 1800, in 1814 he and six others bought the business for £114,000; founded schools at his works for all children under twelve, claimed to be the founder of infant schools 1816; gave up the Lanark works 1823; at meeting at London tavern 14 Aug. 1817 declared that all the religions in the world were founded in error; contested the Lanark district of burghs 31 March 1820; retired from business 1819; started the Economist a paper explanatory of the new system of society, No. 1 27 Jany. 1821, No. 26 21 July 1821, succeeded by the Political economist 1823, and The advocate of the working classes 1827; bought the village of New Harmony in Illinois and Indiana with 20,000 acres for £30,000 April 1825, the scheme failed and he retired 1827; edited The Crisis, or the change from error and misery to truth and happiness, a penny paper, No. 1 14 April 1832, last issue No. 20, vol. iv 23 Aug. 1834; opened an Equitable labour exchange at The Bazaar in Gray’s Inn road, London 3 Sept. 1832, which was moved to Charlotte st. Fitzroy sq. 1 May 1833, and ultimately became bankrupt; took part in the seven cooperative congresses 1830–4, and in the 14 socialist congresses 1835–46; published The new moral world 1834–41; presented to the queen by lord Normanby 5 Jany. 1840; published the Rational quarterly June 1853; author of A statement regarding the New Lanark establishment 1812; A new view of society, or essays on the principle of the formation of the human character 1813–4, 3 ed. 1817; The addresses of R. Owen 1830; The book of the new moral world containing the rational system of society 1836; The catechism of the new moral world 1840; An outline of the rational system of society 1840, 9 ed. 1871; Manifesto of R. Owen, the discoverer of the rational system of society 1840, 8 ed. 1841; The signs of the times or the approach of the millenium 1841; The future of the human race 1853; R Owen’s Journal, No. 1, Nov. 2 1850, No. 104 Oct. 23,1852, 4 volumes. d. Bear’s head hotel, Newtown, Montgomeryshire 17 Nov. 1858. The Life of R. Owen, written by himself 1857, vol. 1, no more published; C. Bradlaugh’s Five dead men whom I knew when living (1877) 3–6; J. Grants Portraits of public characters ii 163–91 (1841); H. Martineau’s Biographical sketches, 4 ed. 1876 307–15; Georgian Era iv 37–41 (1834); The Times 9 Aug. 1817 p. 4, with A view of the Agricultural and manufacturing village of Unity and Mutual Co-operation 8 Jany. 1840 p. 7, 11 Feb. p. 7, 26 March p. 4; S. J. Hall’s Biographical Sketches (1873) 275–8; Reynold’s Miscellany xviii 88 (1857) portrait; G.M. v 643–5 (1858).
OWEN, Robert Dale (eld. son of preceding). b. Glasgow 9 Nov. 1800; educ. at the Swiss college of Hofwyl, near Berne 1820–3; joined his father’s community at New Harmony 1825; became a citizen of U.S. of America 1827; published with Francis Wright at New York The free inquirer Nov. 1828 to 1832; member of the legislature of Indiana 1835, member of the house of representatives 1843; chairman of committee for promoting the Smithsonian institution 1846, one of the regents; United States chargé d’ affaires at Naples 1853, minister 1853–8; chairman of a committee to examine into condition of emancipated freedmen 1863; author of Moral physiology 1831, 12 ed. 1870; Darby and Susan, a tale of Old England 1840; Footfalls on the boundary of another world 1859; The wrong of slavery, the right of emancipation, and the future of the African race in the United States 1864; The debatable land between this world and the next 1872. d. at his summer residence on Lake George, New York 17 June 1877. R. D. Owen’s Threading my way (1874); Appleton’s American biography iv 615 (1888) portrait.