#15037, Joseph John GURNEY

Joseph John was the tenth child of John Gurney of Gurney's Bank.  He was the brother of Samuel Gurney, Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney), a prison and social reformer, and Louisa Hoare (nee Gurney), a writer on education, and also the brother-in-law - through his sister the campaigner Hannah Buxton - of Thomas Fowell Buxton, who was also an anti-slavery campaigner.  He was educated by a private tutor at Oxford, members of non-conformist religious groups being ineligible to matriculate in his day at English universities.

In 1817 Gurney joined his sister Elizabeth Fry in her attempt to end capital punishment and institute improvements in prisons.  They talked with several Members of Parliament but had little success.  In 1818 Gurney was a recorded Quaker minister.  (This meant he was noted as a person gifted  by God for preaching and teaching, but Quakers then neither explicitly designated individuals to take substantial roles in their worship, nor financially supported its ministers unless their travels in that role would otherwise have been impractical.) 

Eventually Robert Peel, the Home Secretary took an interest in prison reform and introduced the Gaols Act 1823, which called for paying salaries to wardens (rather than their being supported by the prisoners themselves) and putting female warders in charge of female prisoners.  It also prohibited the use of irons or manacles.  Gurney and Fry visited prisons all over Great Britain to gather evidence of the horrible conditions in them to present to Parliament.  They published their findings in a book entitled Prisons in Scotland and the North of England. 

Gurney campaigned against slavery during trips to North America and the West Indies from 1837 to 1840.  He promoted the Friends' belief in world peace in Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Denmark.  He also continued to promote the abolition of capital punishment.  He also advocated total abstinence from alcohol.  He wrote a tract on the subject called Water Is Best.  While Gurney was preaching in the United States he caused some controversy that resulted in a split among Quakers.  He was an early supporter of Earlhan College in Richmond, Indiana and the college was named after his family home, Earlham Hall, in honour of his support and encouragement.

Gurney married three times: (1) Jane Birbeck on 10th Sep. 1817; she bore him two children, John Henry and Anna.  (2) Mary Fowler on18th Jul. 1827, Jane having died in 1822. (3) Eliza Paul Kirkbride.  

 Joseph John is buried in the Gurney family plot at Gildencroft Quaker Cemetery, Norwich.