#15494, Henry Edmund GURNEY

Henry, his wife and his parents were ardent proponents of Homeopathy and offered large sums of money for hospital trials.

Overend, Gurney and Company was for about forty years the largest discounting house in the world.  At first only discounting bills it soon came to lending money on all sorts of securities.  In the panic of 1825, the firm were able to lend money to many houses to tide them over their difficulties; this brought them into even greater favour.  Samuel Gurney became known as "the bankers' banker" and many firms who had previously dealt with the Bank of England now commenced depositing their surplus cash in his hands.  At the time of Samuel Gurney's death in 1856, it was calculated that this house held deposits amounting to eight million pounds.