COWEN, Joseph (1800-1873), of 3 Redcliffe Square, London, Mdx. and Stella Hall, Blaydon-on-Tyne, Northumb.

Remembered as ‘a sort of king amongst the Newcastle men’, Joseph Cowen entered parliament in 1865 as a ‘Radical-Reformer’ after a distinguished career of public service on Tyneside.1Birmingham Daily Post, 27 Dec. 1873. A descendent of sixteenth-century Lindisfarne labourers, Cowen was born into a family of blacksmiths at Greenside, near Winlaton, Durham, and began his working life as an apprentice chain-maker in the factory of Sir Ambrose Crawley, before joining his brother-in-law, Anthony Forster, as a firebrick maker. In 1844 he developed and patented a unique firebrick, which won several awards at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Establishing his own firebrick-making business at Blaydon, he expanded into national and international markets, and purchased the adjoining colliery, a small railway line, and substantial tracts of neighbouring land. A generous employer, Cowen provided his disabled and elderly former employees with a weekly pension and provision for accommodation and fuel.2Newcastle Courant, 26 Dec. 1873; W. F. Rae, ‘Cowen, Joseph (1829-1900)’, rev. E.F. Biagini, Oxf. DNB., www.oxforddnb.com; J. Allen, Joseph Cowen and Popular Radicalism on Tyneside, 1829-1900 (2007), 18-20; N. Todd, The Militant Democracy: Joseph Cowen and Victorian Radicalism (1991), 24-7; W. Duncan, The life of Joseph Cowen (1904), 4. Note that the subject of all these studies is Cowen’s son, Joseph, MP for Newcastle 1873-1886.

Cowen, whose political sympathies were well-known on Tyneside, had been secretary of the Winlaton branch of the Northern Political Union, a marshall for the protest against the Peterloo massacre on Newcastle town moor in 1819, and played a prominent role in local agitations for parliamentary reform and for the repeal of the corn laws. In 1849 he was part of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce delegation that attended the Paris Peace Conference. A poor law guardian, councillor and alderman, Cowen was best known for his chairmanship of the River Tyne Commission, of which he was made a life member by parliament.3Allen, Joseph Cowen, 21, 107. The improvements put in place under his stewardship transformed the Tyne estuary into a major port, earning him a knighthood from Gladstone, whom he had previously welcomed to Tyneside during the Liberal leader’s visit in October 1862.4Gladstone took a trip on the Tyne on a steamboat chartered by the River Tyne Commission. ‘Lending his arm to Mrs Gladstone’ as she embarked the vessel, Cowen hosted the journey. Newcastle Courant, 10 Oct. 1862.

At the 1865 general election, Cowen, representing the town’s radical interest, came forward for Newcastle in opposition to two moderate Liberals. Calling for a reduction in taxation, and stressing both his local credentials and his familiarity with the committee rooms of parliament, he was comfortably returned at the top of the poll. 5Newcastle Courant, 14 July 1865. Although it was later suggested that ‘when he entered the house he was too old to make much impression as an active politician’,6Newcastle Courant, 26 Dec. 1873. Cowen spoke succinctly on a range of social issues, urging reform of public health legislation, the poor law and the factory acts, almost always weaving references to Tyneside into his remarks.7Hansard, 27 July 1866, vol. 184, c. 1649; 30 July, vol. 184, c. 1685; 11 July 1867, vol. 188, c. 1419; 25 July 1867, vol. 189, c. 144; 30 July 1867, vol. 189, cc. 482, 483. He also made a number of interventions during the franchise debates of 1867, arguing forcefully for household suffrage, and attacking the Derby ministry’s bill as ‘a deception, a Bill to mislead, a Bill to create mischief’.8Hansard, 12 Apr. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1639-41. Although present at the tea-room meeting, 8 Apr., Cowen supported Gladstone’s proposal for a £5 borough franchise on 12 Apr., and also divided with him over the borough occupation franchise, 9 May, cumulative voting in three-member seats, 5 July, and the Lords’ amendment to the franchise bill, 8 Aug. Occupying a seat below the gangway, Cowen was generally loyal to the Liberal whip, though he displayed his truculent side over Ireland, dividing in the minority with Irish MPs over the suspension of habeas corpus, 2 and 3 Aug. 1866. Throughout his career Cowen consistently urged the forging of better Anglo-Irish relations, and in December 1867 he criticised the ‘intolerant religious legislation’ to which Irish Catholics remained subjected.9Newcastle Chronicle, 24 Dec. 1867.

Successfully defending his seat at the 1868 general election, Cowen maintained his pro-Irish stance, opposing a succession of coercive legislation, but he began to discharge his parliamentary duties ‘with less assiduity’.10Newcastle Courant, 26 Dec. 1873. After a short illness, he died in December 1873, leaving over £100,000 as well as extensive business interests and property, and was succeeded by his son, Joseph.11Allen, Joseph Cowen, 18. Standing for the vacant seat at Newcastle, Joseph Cowen boasted that his father had ‘preserved to the end the ardent political opinions of his youth and … died as earnest and advanced a Radical as he was … fifty years ago’.12J. Cowen, Speeches on Public Questions and Political Policy (1874), 3. With flags flying at half-mast along the Tyne following the announcement of his death, there is little doubt that Cowen established a powerbase within Tyneside radicalism that his son, arguably the most prominent critic of late-Victorian Liberal ‘caucus’ politics and MP for Newcastle, 1873-86, was able to utilise.13Allen, Joseph Cowen, 4.