Background
Gurney was the only son of Joseph John Gurney of Earlham Hall, Norwich, Norfolk.
banker ornithologist politician
Gurney was the only son of Joseph John Gurney of Earlham Hall, Norwich, Norfolk.
At the age of ten he was sent to a private tutor at Leytonstone near the Epping Forest, where he met Henry Doubleday, and commenced his first natural history collection. At the age of seventeen he joined the family"s banking business in Norwich. Gurney published a number of articles in The Zoologist on the birds of Norfolk.
He also commenced a collection of birds of prey.
Between 1875 and 1882 he produced a series of notes in The Ibis on the first volume of the Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum, and in 1884 brought out a List of Diurnal Birds of Prey, with References and Annotations. Foreign the last twenty years of his life he resided at the family"s home at Northrepps, near Cromer.
John Henry Gurney Junior."s daughter Agatha Gurney (1881–1937) married Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise, 1st Baronet. He was appointed a High Sheriff of Norfolk.
He stood down from the House of Commons at the 1865 general election.
16th United Kingdom Parliament. 17th United Kingdom Parliament. 18th United Kingdom Parliament.
Zoological Society of London]
The archives of Cambridge University Museum of Zoology contains five volumes of correspondence between Alfred Newton and Gurney, who was a founding member of the Norfolk Naturalists Trust.
He was elected unopposed as Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for King"s Lynn at a by-election in 1854, and was re-elected unopposed in 1857 and 1859.