William Brodie Gurney

William Brodie Gurney (1777-1855) succeeded his father, Joseph (1744-1815), as shorthand writer for the Old Bailey and for parliament; his older brother, John (1768-1745) (later Sir John Gurney) became a leading London lawyer, judge, and eventually Baron of the Exchequer in 1832. William Brodie Gurney openly identified with radical politics in the 1790s, becoming a liberal “Democrat” in 1795, which he later defined as “one opposed to the arbitrary power then attempted to be assumed by Pitt and his colleagues” (Salter, Some Particulars 66).  At the same time, his older brother was working fervently on the behalf of numerous political radicals under assault by the English government. A portion of John Gurney’s library also resides in the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, which includes a volume of radical political pamphlets from the 1790s (shelfmark 42.e.15) containing works by Daniel Isaac Eaton, Jeremiah Joyce, and Benjamin Flower. Between 1770 and 1816, the Gurneys were staunch Particular Baptists, first under Thomas Craner at Red Cross Street and then under James Dore at Maze Pond, Southwark. One of the leading Baptist layman of his day, W. B. Gurney helped form a Sunday school at Maze Pond in 1801 and in 1803 the London Sunday School Union, of which he was at various times secretary, treasurer, and president, remaining a part of the organization until his death. For many years he served as editor of The Youth’s Magazine, a cheap periodical devoted to religious concerns. He was involved with the British and Foreign Bible Society, treasurer of Stepney College (1828-1844), the Baptist Missionary Society (1835-1855), and the Particular Baptist Fund. He authored A Lecture to Children and Youth on the History and Characters of Heathen Idolatry. With Some References to the Effects of Christian Missions (1848), and edited the 15th and 16th editions of Thomas Gurney’s Brachygraphy (1824, 1835). Gurney’s daughter, Amelia, married Joseph Angus in 1841. Gurney’s son, Joseph (1804-1879) (who was for over 50 years a member of the committee of the Religious Tract Society and later treasurer of Regent’s Park College) succeeded his father as shorthand writer for parliament in 1849, remaining in that position until his retirement in 1872. At that time, his nephew, William Henry Gurney Salter, took over, continuing more than 100 years of service by members of the Gurney family as shorthand writers for parliament and the Old Bailey. See William Henry Gurney Salter, ed., Some Particulars of the Lives of William Brodie Gurney and his Immediate Ancestors. Written Chiefly by Himself (London: Unwin, 1902); A. C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists (London: Baptist Union Publications Department, 1947), 146-147.