Owen Owen

Owen Owen was a Liverpool-based operator of department stores in the United Kingdom and Canada.

The man

Owen Owen was born on 13 October 1847 at Cwmrhaeadr near Machynlleth at the westernmost tip of Montgomeryshire. His family were hill farmers. 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. He was educated at the Wesleyan College, Taunton, and started working at his uncle's shop in 1860.

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, close to where his father's brother, Robert, had had a shop at number 93. By 1873 Owen Owen had over 120 employees, many from Wales, and a quarter of an acre of floor space. 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 retired employees. In the 1880s he began investing in other enterprises including railways, and in 1889 became director of Evans & Owen Ltd in Bath, the shop started by his uncle. He moved to London in 1891, after marrying, but continued to manage the Liverpool store which became one of the largest stores in the north of England. He also invested in many other stores and estates.

Owen Owen (school inspector)

Owen Owen (1850 – 14 March 1920) was a Welsh teacher who, after being headmaster of a successful private school for boys in Oswestry, Shropshire, became the first Chief Inspector of the Central Welsh Board for Intermediate Education.

Life

Owen was born in the parish of Llaniestyn, on the Lleyn peninsula in North Wales. He was educated at Botwnnog grammar school (as was his cousin John Owen, who later became Bishop of St Davids). From there, he proceeded to Jesus College, Oxford where he matriculated in 1873. In 1877, he graduated with a B.A. degree in Literae Humaniores, obtaining his M.A. in 1882. In about 1878, he became headmaster of the Willow Street Academy, a private school in Oswestry, Shropshire. In the 1881 census, the school was recorded as having fourteen boarders aged from ten to twenty four, and a schoolmaster and a housekeeper in addition to Owen. The school’s success led, in 1883, to the purchase of new premises—a house called The Lawn, on Church Street, Oswestry, that had previously been the residence of members of a local wealthy family—and the school was known as Oswestry High School, or the Boys High School. Owen remained as headmaster and the excellent record of the school led to it drawing pupils from across Wales.