Sir Richard Owen : his life and works / by C.W.G. Rohrer.

  • Rohrer, C. W. G. (Caleb Wyand Geeting), 1873-1952
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir Richard Owen : his life and works / by C.W.G. Rohrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    L136] stone, Frank Buckland, the Duke of Argyll, with his sons, Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Roderick Mnrchison. Towards the end of 1857 Owen was offered and accepted an appointment which some years previously, while at the Royal College of Surgeons he was obliged to decline; it was the Fullerian professorship of physiology at the Royal Insti- tution of Great Britain. Private Life. Professor Owen was one of the most affable of men. His home-life was ideal. In scientific circles he was universally loved and respected. Even those whose views ran counter to his own always dealt with him with the highest consideration. His earnestness of purpose, his sincerity and frankness, were marked traits of his character. On July 20, 1835, Professor Owen’s thirty-first birthday, the event took place to which he had so long looked forward, namely, his marriage to Miss Caroline Clift. Professor Owen had been engaged to Miss Clift for eight years. It was a very quiet wedding, and is thus described in Miss Clift’s diary: July 20.—Richard Owen and I, my father and Harriet Sheppard, were in the new St. Pancras Church, Euston Square, by half- past eight o’clock. The Rev. Mr. Laing came immediately after we got into the vestry, and, Caroline Clift having been lost on the road, Mrs. Richard Owen returned to breakfast at No. 1. Euston Grove; after which my husband, my mother and I set off to Oxford. This union was blessed with one child, William Owen, born October 6, 1837. On October 6, Professor Owen writes in his wife’s diary: At a quarter-past nine William Owen was born. The next day there is the entry: Papa’s joy a little damped by excruciating toothache. Mother and child as well as possible. About a month afterwards Mrs. Owen begins the diary again. The diaries of Mrs. Owen, began about the year 1827, are now kept almost without a break up to 1873, the year of her death, thus covering a period of at least forty-six years.
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