Robert Owen nearly didn t make it to adulthood. In the late 18th century the youngster almost died when he ate a spoonful of scalding hot flummery, and on another occasion was forced to flee from the path of an oncoming wagon pulled by a cream coloured mare as he crossed the wooden bridge over the Severn in Newtown. During an age in which young people were seemingly perennially imperilled, either incident might have deprived the world of a social reformer, one of the architects of the cooperative movement, of an engineer of workers rights and a socialist figurehead. This Friday, May 14, marks 250 years to the day that Owen was born in the house above his father s shop in Broad Street in Newtown in 1771.