Owen Vincent Madden was born into an Irish-Catholic working-class family at 25 Somerset Road in Leeds, England, on December 18, 1891, the son of Francis Madden and Mary Madden (O’Neill). Both emigrants from Ireland,[2] his mother being from Sligo and his father from Mayo.
Madden’s mother left for New York to become a maid, leaving Owen and his sister Mary and brother Martin in a British orphanage. On June 4, 1902, Madden, together with his brother Martin sailed from Liverpool as steerage passengers on board the SS Teutonic. He re-joined his mother and sister in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, yet another immigrant in the city’s long established Irish community His father, an abusive alcoholic, died in 1932.