Owen Owen - The Man

The Man

Owen Owen was born in October 1847 and died on Easter Sunday in 1910 at the age of 62.

His family were hill farmers at the westernmost tip of Montgomeryshire in the hills south of Machynlleth. Welsh agriculture had prospered during the Napoleonic Wars when imports of food were restricted but, after the war, there was such a severe depression that in 1838 the farm which had been their home for generations had to be mortgaged and the following year sold.

Owen Owen was the first child of his father's second wife but she died after giving birth to six children when Owen Owen was only eight. His mother had a brother, Samuel, who needed help to run his draper's shop in Bath. So Owen Owen went to Bath and his uncle gave him both a home and an education. In 1868, at the age of 20, with some help from Uncle Samuel, Owen Owen opened his own draper's shop at 121 London Road, Liverpool. (His father's brother, Robert, had had a shop at number 93 but he died in 1857.) The company effectively remained under family control until 1985. Owen Owen was interested in his staff's well-being. Besides being the first employer in Liverpool to give staff a half day off each week, he also set up a trust fund for employees in need.