John Bowen

John Bowen, born in Bridgwater, Somerset, England, was a social reformer and author of *An Improved and Enlarged Edition of Nicholson's New Carpenter's Guide* (1825) and *A Brief Memoir of the Life and Character of William Baker, F.G.S.* (1854). In 1799 he was apprenticed to Thomas Pkye, a brazier and bell-founder, but eventually joined the Navy. After being shipwrecked he returned to Bridgwater and resumed his apprenticeship with Pyke. After moving to London, he worked with a lighthouse contractor in 1806. In 1807-8, he worked in the Farne Islands, Northumberland, England, to install a temporary light. He went to India in 1808 for the East India Company, erecting lighthouses and making machinery. Bowen returned home in 1812, during which time he took a course in practical mathematics from Peter Nicholson, the mathematician and architect. He returned to India and the East India Company, and carried out consultancy work for Calman and Brown of Calcutta. In 1816 Bowen joined Calman and Henry Jessop on a mission to transport the cast iron components of a large iron bridge and a pumping engine upriver from Calcutta to Lucknow. Bowen returned overland to Calcutta, but bad health forced his return to England. He became a wine merchant in Bridgwater in partnership with Morley and Charles James Chubb, and involved himself in local affairs. The wine merchant partnership was dissolved in 1830 but Bowen continued the business alone. Bowen later became engineer to the Bridgwater Turnpike Trust. Bowen was appointed a Guardian of the Poor for the Bridgwater Union, but resigned in 1837 over conditions at the Bridgwater Workhouse. In an effort to reform the situation, he wrote letters to *The Times* and to Parliament, as well as appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on the Operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1838. In 1846 and 1847, under the nom-de-plume “Inquirer”, Bowen wrote a series of letters published in *The Bridgwater Times* describing visits he made to homes of the rural poor in a number of the parishes of the Bridgwater and Langport Poor-law Unions. Source: [Grace's Guide To British Industrial History](https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/John_Bowen_(1785-1854)