#15217, John Henry GURNEY

For a while he worked at Backhouse's bank in Darlington but spent most of his life in Norfolk where he took a prominent part in religious and philanthropic work.  He was elected a fellow of the Zoological Society in 1868, became a member of the British Ornithological Union in 1870, and was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1885.  He was president of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society in 1881-2, 1888-9 and 1919-20 and held the same office on the Norfolk Wild Birds Protection Committee.  He was always supportive of the Norwich Museum, particularly when it moved into the castle and joined its committee in 1894.

John Henry was delighted when he was described by a Scots gamekeeper as "Yon man who is terrible fond of birds."

He married Margaret Jane Gurney (1851-1940), his second cousin (daughter of Henry Edmund Gurney (1821-1905)) on 25th October 1876 at St. Marylebone Church, Westminster, London.