page_title: Goldsworthy Gurney
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Goldsworthy Gurney / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: London's smallest police station! Located in the south east corner of Trafalgar Square is what was the smallest police station in London. Built inside a lamp post, it was capable of holding one policeman and was mainly used as a lookout post during demonstrations (pre 1960), with a direct line to Scotland Yard. Now it is mainly used by cleaners to store their equipment.
context_page_description: Sir Goldsworthy Gurney was an English surgeon, chemist, lecturer, consultant, architect, builder. He was a prototypical British gentleman scientist and inventor of the Victorian era.
  Amongst many accomplishments, he developed the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and later applied its principles to a novel form of illumination, the Bude light; developed a series of early steam-powered road vehicles; and laid claim—still discussed and disputed today—to the blastpipe, a key component in the success of steam locomotives, engines, and other coal-fired systems.
  Events surrounding the failure of his steam vehicle enterprise gave rise to controversy in his time, with considerable polarisation of opinion. His daughter Anna Jane Gurney was devoted to him. During her lifetime, she engaged in an extraordinary campaign to ensure the blastpipe was seen as his invention.
context_section_description: Gurney was born in St Merryn, Cornwall, England on 14 February 1793. His unusual Christian name was his grandmother's surname but taken from his godmother who was a Maid of Honour to Queen Charlotte. Gurney's grandfather married into money, allowing his father, and to an extent himself, to live as gentlemen.
  He was schooled at the Grammar School at Truro, where he showed an interest in contemporary sciences; and had the opportunity through friends to meet Richard Trevithick and see his 'Puffing Devil', a full-size steam road carriage, at Camborne.
  After school he took a medical education with a Dr. Avery at Wadebridge, succeeding to the whole practice in 1813, and providing him with sufficient income to marry Elizabeth Symons, a farmer's daughter from Launcells, in 1814. The couple settled in Wadebridge where their daughter Anna Jane was born in January 1815. He practised as a surgeon, but he also became interested in chemistry and mechanical science; he was also an accomplished pianist, and constructed his own piano, described as a 'large instrument'.
  He moved with his family to London in 1820, apparently discontented with rural life and wishing to seek his fortune. The family settled at 7 Argyle Street, near Hanover Square, where Gurney continued his practice as a surgeon. There he expanded his scientific knowledge and started giving a series of lectures on the elements of chemical science to the Surrey Institution, where he was appointed lecturer in 1822. A son, Goldsworthy John, was also born to the couple in that year, at Launcells (later to die relatively young in 1847).
  A skill attributed to Gurney was an ability to express scientific thought on paper and through lectures. His lectures in the 1822-3 period included one on the application of steam power to road vehicles. He was also of a practical bent, and in 1823 was awarded an Isis gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts for devising an oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. 
  By 1825, he had started practical work on a steam carriage, taking space for a small workshop in Oxford Street and filing a first patent for "An apparatus for propelling carriages on common roads or railways – without the aid of horses, with sufficient speed for the carriage of passengers and goods". His work encompassed the development of the blastpipe, which used steam to increase the flow of air through a steam engine's chimney, so increasing the draw of air over the fire and, in short, much increasing the power-to-weight ratio of the steam engine. 
  In 1826 he purchased a manufacturing works at, and moved his family to living space in, 154 Albany Street, near Regent's Park, and proceeded to improve the designs of his carriages, described below. Whilst the carriages certainly had technical merit and much promise, he was unsuccessful in commercialising them; by the spring of 1832 he had run out of funding and was forced to auction his remaining business assets, eventually losing a great deal of his own and investors' money. The circumstances of the failure engendered controversy expressed in contemporary scientific publications, as well as in committees of the House of Commons.
  In 1830, Gurney leased a plot of land overlooking Summerleaze Beach in Bude, from his friend Sir Thomas Acland, and set about the construction of a new house to be built amongst the sand hills. The construction rested on an innovative concrete raft foundation, representing an early worked example of this technique. The original house called "The Castle" still stands but has been extended over the past century. The Bude and Stratton Heritage Trust has been formed and plans are well advanced, under the Limelight Project, to raise funds to interpret the fascinating history and heritage of Bude and the surrounding area, within Bude Castle. In this period he became godfather to William Carew Hazlitt, who notes that Gurney was involved in property development in Fulham.
  At The Castle, Gurney regrouped from his carriage failure, applying his mind to the principle of illumination by the forcing of oxygen into a flame to increase the brilli
caption: Replica bude-light in Trafalgar Square, with police station built into the base
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