JJ was a Norwich banker with heart of gold

August 13, 2003

GURNEY ROAD
(Mousehold)

Earlham Hall, where Joseph John Gurney found time to enjoy the peaceful beauty of the estate in the last years of his life.

IT was back in the winter of 1847 that the people of Norwich went into mourning — the banker with a heart of gold had died.

Joseph John Gurney, a member of the powerful and famous family, never recovered from falling off his pony after it stumbled on Orford Hill.

And when he died at his home, Earlham Hall, it was said he was a man “worn out with well-doing”. He was in his 50s.

A partner in the Gurney banking house, now incorporated into Barclays, JJ was a staunch Quaker who devoted so much of his life to helping the poor.

Joseph John Gurney.

Working with his sister, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, he fought against barbaric criminal laws which sentenced starving men and women to death for petty thefts.

And when still a young man he saved the lives of four local men sentenced to death for burglary on doubtful evidence after launching his own investigation into the case.

After a privileged upbringing in Norwich, JJ went to travel the country, campaigning to improve conditions in prisons which shocked him. “Vice and misery everywhere,” he wrote.

When, in 1825, a great trade depression swept Norwich, he sponsored a fund to meet the appalling distress among the labourers.

He called in the help of his Soup Society and his Coal Society to enable thousands of poor families to be fed and provided with fuel for fires.

In the winter of 1829/30 there was again widespread unemployment across Norwich and JJ’s mediation alone prevented the weavers from rioting.

He invited a deputation of the men to meet him for breakfast at Earlham and went on to tell the bosses to give them work. “Do not ask them to work for wages which will not keep body and soul together. Let us be fair in this city,” he said.

And when he spoke, they listened. JJ was one of the few men who bridged the gap between rich and poor.

In the hungry 1840s, a little over a year before his death, JJ wrote to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, on behalf of the people of Norwich pleading for a modification of the corn duties.

He said crops were below average and that the people of Norwich at a miserably inadequate level of wages, had difficulty surviving the winters and many were suffering from smallpox.

Apart from his work in Norwich, JJ travelled the world and became famous as a great Quaker, visiting Europe and the West Indies — sometimes with Elizabeth Fry. They pleaded for the abolition of slavery.

His attachment to “dear old Earlham” strengthened in the last years of his life when he found more time to enjoy the peaceful beauty of the estate.

According to one of the Gurneys, his lovely smile and soft, beautiful grey hair, crowned with a black velvet cap, made him look like a fine old Roman Catholic archbishop.

Members of his family went on to serve Norwich well and in 1886 the then Lord Mayor of Norwich, John Gurney, declared Mousehold Heath officially open as a recreation ground for the citizens.

Remember JJ and the rest of the Gurney clan the next time you visit Mousehold — and Earlham.

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