Sir Joseph Cowen (10 February 1800 – 19 December 1873)[1][2] was a British Liberal Party politician and manufacturer.

[3][4] Cowen was first apprenticed as a blacksmith in Winlaton, County Durham, at age 19, before later becoming a colliery owner, director of a shipping company, first secretary of the Blacksmiths' Friendly Society, and an original gentleman of the Four & Twenty.

[4] He was a coal owner and firebrick and clay retort manufacturer, having inherited the Blaydon Burn factory, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from his father, where he joined his brother-in-law.

While in Parliament, he advocated Church of England disestablishment and game law abolition, shorter parliamentary terms, and redistribution and equalisation of the franchise between counties and boroughs.

He also refused to support Irish coercion and aided in the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty with France.