another invention most extensively used. The main feature of the stove was the same which the inventor had previously applied to his system of warming and ventilating the two houses of parliament. For a second time Gurney directed his attention to the subject of light, and introduced a new mode of lighting into the old House of Commons. A further advance was made in 1852, when he arranged the system of lighting and ventilation in the new houses of parliament. He held an appointment to superintend and extend the system from 1854 to 1863, and on his retirement in the latter year from his public duties his system in its main principles was still retained.
For several years after 1845 Gurney resided for portions of each year at Hornacott Manor, Launceston, Cornwall, which he had purchased, and where he gave much attention to practical farming. He was president of two clubs for the improvement of agriculture at Launceston and Stratton. In 1862 Gurney obtained a patent for the invention of a stove, by means of which he produced gas from oil and other fatty substances. It was intended for lighthouses, and experimentally applied under his own direction for lighting a part of H.M. ship Resistance. His ‘Observations pointing out a means by which a Seaman may identify Lighthouses, and know their Distance from his Ship, in any position or bearing of the Compass,’ were published in 1864. Gurney suggested the flashing of light (for which he had an ingenious contrivance) as a mode of signalling.
As the result of evidence given by Gurney after a colliery explosion at Barnsley, the government enacted that all coal mines should have two shafts. He planned and superintended, by means of his steam-jet (in 1849), the ventilation of the pestilential sewer in Friar Street, London, which could not be cleansed by any other means, and suggested to the metropolitan commissioners of sewers that a steam-jet apparatus should be placed at the mouth of every sewer emptying into the great Thames riverside sewer.
Gurney was a magistrate for Cornwall and Devon, and in 1863 was knighted in acknowledgment of his discoveries. The same year, while engaged in correcting his ‘Observations on Lighthouses,’ he had a stroke of paralysis. He was thus incapacitated for scientific investigation, and retired to his seat at Reeds, near Bude, where the remaining years of his life were cheered by the affectionate solicitude of his daughter, Anna J. Gurney, who was his constant companion for more than sixty years, and who had taken the deepest interest in his discoveries. Gurney died at Reeds on 28 Feb. 1875. A clock was placed in Poughill church tower, Stratton, Cornwall (25 April 1889), and a stained-glass window in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster (unveiled 28 July, 1892), by Miss Gurney to commemorate her father's inventions, which had ‘made communication ... so rapid that it became necessary for all England to keep uniform clock-time’ (tablet in the church).
Gurney's works are: 1. ‘Course of Lectures on Chemical Science, as delivered at the Surrey Institution,’ 1823. 2. ‘Observations on Steam Carriages on Turnpike Roads, &c., with the Report of the House of Commons,’ 1832. 3. ‘Account of the Invention of the Steam-jet or Blast, and its Application to Steamboats and Locomotive Engines (in reference to the claims put forth by Mr. Smiles in his Life of George Stephenson),’ 1859. 4. ‘Observations pointing out a means by which a Seaman may identify Lighthouses, and know their Distance from his Ship in any position or bearing of the Compass,’ 1864.
[Gurney's works; Times, 26 Dec. 1875; West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, 18 March 1875 and 8 April 1886; private memoranda. See also the bibliographical notices in Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 198, 199, iii. 1212, 1213.]
GURNEY, HUDSON (1775–1864), antiquary and verse-writer, born at Norwich on 19 Jan. 1775, was the eldest son of Richard Gurney of Keswick Hall, Norfolk, by his first wife, Agatha, daughter of David Barclay of Youngsbury, Hertfordshire. He was educated by his grandfather Barclay, by Dr. Thomas Young, the Egyptologist, and by John Hodgkin [q. v.] He inherited a fortune from his father. In early life he travelled on the continent with his friend Lord Aberdeen. His first publication was a privately printed ‘English History and Chronology in Rhyme.’ In 1799 he published ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (4to and 8vo), an imitation in verse of the ‘Golden Ass’ of Apuleius (also 1800, 1801, and in Bohn's ‘Classical Library,’ ‘Apuleius’). He also published ‘Heads of Ancient History,’ 1814, 12mo; ‘Memoir of Thomas Young, M.D.,’ 1831, 8vo; ‘Letter to Dawson Turner on Norwich and the Venta Icenorum’ [Norwich, 1847], 8vo; and ‘Orlando Furioso’ [1843], 8vo (verse translation, written in 1808, of parts of the poem). He also wrote for the ‘Archæologia,’ chiefly on English antiquities, in vols. xviii. (on the Bayeux Tapestry), xx–xxii. xxiv. xxv. and xxx. He purchased from the widow of Samuel Woodward all his manuscripts, drawings, and books on Norfolk topography, and printed for Mrs. Woodward's benefit the ‘Norfolk Topographer's Manual’ and the ‘History of Norwich Castle.’
In March 1816 Gurney became M.P. for
