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.

This article about a Liberal Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is a stub.