Captain, 10th Manchester Regiment.
Killed in Action Sunday 6th June 1915, age 33.
Remembered on the Helles Memorial, Turkey.
Former student of chemistry.
George was born in 1881 at Eccleston, Preston. He was the fifth son of Thomas Owen of Penketh and Warrington. He was educated at Warrington Grammar School and Warrington Technical School. After leaving school he entered the laboratory of R.G. Ruddock of the Whitecross Iron Works, Warrington. George began his studies in Chemistry, one of the subjects in which he had won several 1st class certificates whilst at the Technical School, at Manchester University in 1901. He played football for the University, and was a champion swimmer who was instrumental in popularizing the swimming club. In 1905 he took up an appointment in the Sanitary Department of Manchester Corporation at Davyhulme. George married Ruth Mary Cocks of Urmston in 1910 and they lived in Cheadle Hulme. When war broke out he was a Yarn Agent at the Manchester Cotton Exchange.
As a youth George joined the 2nd Volunteer Battalion, Manchester Regiment attaining the rank of sergeant and from April 1908 to February 1910 he was a member of the University Officer Training Corps. He became a lieutenant in March 1912 and in September 1914 was promoted to captain in the 1/10th (Oldham Territorial) Battalion of the Manchester Regiment. The battalion was first sent to Egypt and then in early May to Gallipoli where George was killed. In a letter to George’s wife Lieutenant Colonel J.B. Rye said “It is with deepest sorrow that I have to tell you of the death of your brave husband, Captain Owen, yesterday. He was with his company, which had been attached to the Royal Fusiliers, and during three days’ hard fighting had made quite a name for himself by the leading of his men and the example he set them, and it was whilst taking them on to recapture a Turkish Trench that he was killed… We have lost a cheerful and popular comrade”. Local newspapers reported that within a short time of joining his battalion he “was soon the esteem of officers and men, being both efficient and painstaking. His death was instantaneous.”
George’s estate, left to his wife, was worth £227 16s.