It was natural that, as Owen’s reputation grew, he should be involved in some of the schemes for improving the condition of the people which from time to time engaged the attention of Government. In 1843 he served on a commission of inquiry into the health of towns, and exercised himself over sewers, slaughter-houses, and such-like abominations. In 1846 he was on the Metropolitan Sewers Commission, which grew out of the former, and he did much good work in hunting up evidence about the spread of cholera and typhus from imperfect drainage. In the course of this he incurred considerable unpopularity, and was contemptuously nick-named ‘Jack of all Trades.’ The work became so heavy and absorbing that he thought of resigning; but when Lord Morpeth urged him to remain, on the ground that they could ill spare his ‘enlightened philanthropy,’ he not only withdrew his resignation, but consented to serve on a commission to consider the state of Smithfield Market and the meat supply of London (1849), a subject on which he held very decided opinions. Probably his zoological qualifications, coupled with his knowledge of what had been effected on the Continent in the way of establishing extramural slaughter-houses, had much to do with abolishing the market. He was also on the Preliminary Committee of Organization for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and chairman of the jury on raw materials, alimentary substances, &c. Similar services were performed by him for the exhibition held at Paris in 1855.
He was also a mark for many of those questions, serious and absurd alike, which are presented for solution to men of science. A firm of undertakers asked him how much they ought to charge for embalming Mr Beckford; a grave Oriental from the Turkish Embassy submitted to his examination the bowl of a tobacco-pipe which he believed to have been made out of the beak of a Phœnix; his opinion was sought by the Home Office on the window-tax, and by Charles Dickens on the publicity of executions; his microscopical skill was brought to bear on the so-called contemporary annotations of Shakespeare; and he demolished one of the many sea-serpents in which a marvel-loving public from time to time believes. He showed very conclusively that it was probably a large seal. His letter to the _Times_ on the subject excited a good deal of attention, and Prince Albert dubbed him ‘the serpent-killer.’ He was also to a certain extent responsible for the models of extinct animals in the gardens of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and was rewarded for his trouble by a dinner in the spacious carcase of the Iguanodon.