User:Sizombie73

A Man of Independent Means

The life and times of James Cowen, Dispenser of drugs, and styling himself and known as Medical and Surgical Reformer and Patentee, jointly with John Sweetlove, of a machine, termed a Locomotive Land Battery or Devastator. James was born in Windsor on 22nd July 1796 as James Cohen, son of James and Rosina. His father is named on his first marriage certificate to Maria Meates in 1841, but ‘father’ is left blank on all other occasions it is required in official documentation. There has been some family speculation that the Duke of Sutherland was his father, his mother being a maid. This could be how a bastard Jew managed to sign-up for two crack regiments in his career in the armed services – more of this later.

On his record for his 22 years in the armed services, he is noted as a ‘Brush maker by trade’. As he signed up for the Royal Marines at the age of 15 years 306 days, he would not have seen out the seven year apprenticeship required of a brush maker at this period in history. James served as a private for his entire army career and saw time in the Peninsula War from 1812 as a member of the Royal Marines. His record mentions, ‘Afloat with the Royal Marines and in the Rifle Brigade about three years in France according to his own statement and about 15 months in Malta.’ This time in France included the momentous year of 1815. The year that witnessed the return of Napoleon Bonaparte from exile on Elba, the rise of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington and the epoch moulding Battle of Waterloo.

He may well have fought at the Battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, as he appears to have been seconded to the 95th Rifle Brigade for some time before he actually joined them on 10th October 1815. He served in Malta and transferred to the Newfoundland Veterans Company (NVC) in March 1827. On contracting dysentery in June 1828, he returned to Britain, arriving at the Military Hospital at Fort Pitt, Chatham in Kent, before being transferred to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. His last nine to ten years in the army were spent as a Medical Orderly in the NVC. He returned to Fort Pitt, but it is not clear where he went from here. The NVC had a reputation for containing “chancers” according to a source at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, but were mainly considered a home guarding regiment. Obviously they were a Canadian regiment but were attached to the British army.

By the time of his discharge, in April 1837, James was based in Worcester and, as described on his service record was: 40 7/12 years of age; 5 feet 6 inches in height; brown hair; fair complexion.

It was from this time that James Cowen’s (née Cohen) life became interesting! He became a doctor, registering with the GMC in Worcester, married for the first time and was noted as ‘independent’ in the 1841 census. The reference to independence is down to his internment at Chelsea with dysentery. He would have received a pension which enabled him to set up his business. He enhanced his reputation by marrying Maria Meates, the daughter of a teacher at a school in St Swithins, a district of the city of Worcester.

Moving to London in 1850, he set himself up in Westminster at the corner of Grey Coat Street and Rochester Row, in a shop called John Bull’s Cabin. Throughout the 1850’s and beyond, he began to take on authority with ever increasing intensity. He posted placards outside his shop and published pamphlets railing against the government of the day and became embroiled in several court cases that resulted in his incarceration at “her majesty’s pleasure” on numerous occasions. But his most infamous case was in defence of his own patenting of ‘A Steam driven Locomotive Land Battery’. A tank he invented called the Devastator.

No lesser characters than Robert Owen, philanthropist, chartist and founder of the Co-op movement in London; Lord Palmerston, prime minister of the day; the Duke of Marlborough (Winston Churchill’s grandfather) and Charles Dickens, became involved in James’s story at one level or another.