Robert Owen

It was under the enlightened management of Robert Owen that New Lanark became famous

Robert Owen married David Dale’s daughter, Caroline Dale, in 1799 and in the same year formed a partnership to buy her father's mills at New Lanark. Robert and Caroline set up home in New Lanark and went on to have seven children. Owen remains to this day the name most commonly associated with the site. Although Owen's period of ownership lasted only 10 years longer than that of his father-in-law, David Dale, Owen instituted a wide range of workplace, social, and educational reforms that led to the idea of New Lanark as an 'ideal' community and of Owen himself as a Socialist. Owen described his work at New Lanark as “the most important experiment for the happiness of the human race that has yet been instituted in any part of the world”. 

A full history of Robert Owen's life at New Lanark can be found here on the New Lanark website (opens in new tab).