Joseph
Gurney
was born in Norwich on 2nd August, 1788.
Joseph was the tenth child of John
Gurney, a successful banker and a prominent member of the Society
of Friends. Joseph was the brother of Elizabeth
Fry and Hannah Buxton, the wife of Thomas
Fowell Buxton. Joseph's mother died when he was a child and he
was mainly raised by Elizabeth, who was eight years older than her
brother. At an early age Joseph showed concern for the poor and badly
treated. Elizabeth later recalled that as a child Joseph refused to
take sugar in his tea because of the "poor slaves".
Joseph Gurney was educated at Oxford University
but as a Quaker he was not granted a degree.
In 1818 Gurney became a minister for the Society
of Friends. With his sister, Elizabeth Fry,
Gurney played an active role in the prison reform movement. He also
joined with Thomas Fowell Buxton and Thomas
Clarkson in the struggle against the slave-trade.
In 1817 Gurney joined his sister's campaign to bring an end to capital
punishment. They met several MPs but they found little support for
a change in a system where people could be executed for over 200 offences,
such as stealing clothes or passing a forged banknote.
In February 1817 Charlotte Newman and Mary Ann James were sentenced
to death for forgery. Gurney and Fry campaigned to have these women
prisoners reprived but they were unable to save them from the gallows.
The following month they took up the case of Harriet Skelton, a maidservant
to a solicitor, who had passed forged banknotes under pressure from
her husband. Gurney and Fry, visited Lord
Sidmouth, the Home Secretary,
and pleaded for her life. Sidmouth rejected their arguments and insisted
the execution went ahead. In the House of Commons
Sidmouth warned that reformers like Fry and Gurney were dangerous
people as they trying to "remove the dread of punishment in the
criminal classes."
Lord Sidmouth's successor as Home Secretary, Sir
Robert Peel, was much more sympathetic to the views of Gurney
and introduced a series of reforms including the 1823
Gaols Act. As a result of the legislation introduced by Peel,
there were regular prison inspections, gaolers were paid (before they
were dependent on fees from the prisoners) and women warders were
put in charge of women prisoners.
Peel's reforms did not apply to debtors' prisons or local town gaols.
Gurney and Fry now went on a tour of British prisons in order to obtain
the evidence needed to persuade the government to introduce further
legislation. At Aberdeen, the county
gaol was housed in an ancient, square tower. In the woman's room,
which measured fifteen feet by eight, they found five women and a
sick child. At Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
prisoners had no space to exercise. In Glasgow,
Nottingham, Sheffield,
Leeds, York and
Liverpool, Fry found conditions as bad,
if not worse, than Newgate. After their
tour, Fry and Gurney, published a report of what they found in their
book, Prisons in Scotland
and the North of England.
Gurney made several visits to North America and the West Indies where
he campaigned against slavery. He
also toured Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany,
where he promoted Quaker views on world
peace and the abolition of capital punishment. In 1833 he considered
becoming the Whig candidate for the Norwich
constituency. However, after long discussions with his friends he
decided he could achieve more outside the House
of Commons.
Gurney wrote several books on religion and morality including: Essays
on the Evidence, Doctrines and Practical Operation of Christianity
(1825), The Moral Character
of Jesus Christ (1832), and Religion
and the New Testament (1843).
Joseph Gurney
died on 4th January, 1847.
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