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.

In 1826 he purchased from Jacob Perkins 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.

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.

In 1844 he bought a lease on Hornacott Manor, Boyton, 10 miles (16 km) from Bude, where he built Wodleigh Cottage for himself, and engaged his interest in farming.

[4] Perhaps arising out of the Boyton farming connection he took a second wife, being married at St. Giles in the Field to Jane Betty, the 24-year-old daughter of a farmer from Sheepwash, Devon; Gurney was 61.

In 1863, Gurney was knighted by Queen Victoria, but later that year suffered a paralytic stroke; he sold Hornacott and retired back to Reeds in Cornwall, where he lived with his devoted Anna Jane, ultimately passing away on 28 February 1875.

Gurney is by no means the only pioneering inventor in the history of steam road vehicles – Luke Herbert, in his 1837 Practical Treatise on Rail-Roads and Locomotive Engines, rebuts in scathing fashion claims made for Gurney in preference to Trevithick as inventor of the steam carriage: …it is a matter of fact, that Gurney's carriages, made in every essential respect after Trevithick's models, did, occasionally, run [on the public roads]; and so did the carriages of many other locomotionalists; some prior, some subsequent to Gurney; some decidedly superior to his, and all those that were inferior, were incapacitated from proceeding beyond preparatory trials, by want of that material with which gentlemen of fortune, then unacquainted with steam locomotion, had so lavishly furnished on Mr. Gurney.One of his vehicles was sufficiently robust to make a journey in July 1829, two months before the Rainhill Trials, from London to Bath and back, at an average speed for the return journey of 14 miles per hour—including time spent in refuelling and taking on water.

The local press carried the story of the explosion.The remains of one of this pair rests in Glasgow Museum of Transport, to which it was presented, having been found in a barn near the Paisley Road.

The whole is painted red and this has made photography difficult but appears to have preserved this item, as it is untouched since arriving at the Museum in 1889!A regular service was established between Cheltenham and Gloucester by Sir Charles Dance, running four times daily, for a number of months and based on a fleet of three of Gurney's carriages; but the aspirations of Dance and Gurney were effectively dashed, according to Francis Maceroni in his 1836 book A Few Facts Concerning Elementary Locomotion[6] The many wealthy horse-coach proprietors, together with the narrow minded country gentlemen and magistrates of the district, who erroneously conceived their interests threatened by the substitution of steam power for horse, formed one of the most disgraceful and mean conspiracies against a national undertaking that can be well remembered.

By means of parliamentary intrigue, and false representations, these despicable persons obtained certain local turnpike bills to pass 'the Honourable House' establishing tolls on steam carriages, which amounted to a virtual prohibition on their use.In 1831, Godlsworthy gave evidence to a House of Commons select committee, on the use of Steam carriages, and related tolls.

Maceroni continues: In addition to this flagrant outrage against justice and utility, the worthy squires and magistrates of the Cheltenham district, suddenly, without any necessity, covered a long tract of the road with a layer of loose gravel, a foot deep, which, adding to the above-mentioned difficulties and impediments, put an entire stop to the undertaking.At the same time, press coverage of an accident befalling a Glasgow steam drag adversely affected the reputation of the vehicles.

Its final report stated: Mr Goldsworthy Gurney was the first person to successfully operate steam carriages on common roads, and he took out patents for his invention in 1825 and 1826–27.

In 1830 Mr Gurney entered into contracts with various individuals for the commercial exploitation of his invention, carrying passengers at a lower fare than horse carriages.

[8]A key development of his time at the Surrey Institute was use of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, normally credited to Robert Hare, in which an intensely hot flame was created by burning a jet of oxygen and hydrogen together.

"In 1822… Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney, who subsequently took an active part in their introduction, stated, in his lectures, that "elementary power is capable of being applied to propel carriages along common roads with great political advantage, and the floating knowledge of the day places the object within reach."

After the Rainhill trials of 1829, there was considerable controversy as to the genesis of this invention since it became associated in the mind of the public with George Stephenson—probably through the agency of Samuel Smiles' biography of that man.

In her 1875 letter to The Times, his daughter traces the path of the idea: Gurney communicated it to Timothy Hackworth, who employed it in his Royal George locomotive, from which Stephenson allegedly took his inspiration for its inclusion in the Rocket.

Other problems faced by Gurney's claim to have invented this is the clear use of it by Trevithick as confirmed by contemporary notes and also the patent applied for it by another party in the early 19th century.

He extended the use of the steam-jet to the cleaning of sewers, bridging his mechanical and medical knowledge in the service of the eradication of cholera in the metropolis; and in dealing with mine fires—notably bringing under control a fire known as the burning waste of Clackmannan, which in 1851 had raged for more than 30 years over an area of 26 acres (11 ha), at the South Sauchie Colliery near Alloa.

[9][page needed] In 1880 she donated £500 to memorialise "his" Steam Jet, at the stone-laying ceremony for Truro Cathedral, somehow managing to rope the children of the then Prince of Wales to present the money.

Anna Jane's subscription read: In memory of her father Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, inventor of the steam-jet, as a thank offering to almighty God for the benefit of high speed locomotion whereby His good gifts are conveyed from one nation to another and the word of the Lord is sent unto all parts of the world.A chiming clock presented by her in 1889 to St Olaf's Church, Poughill, in Bude, was inscribed "His inventions and discoveries in steam and electricity rendered transport by land and sea so rapid that it became necessary for all England to keep uniform clock time".

A final Anna Jane tribute was a stained glass window in St. Margaret's, Westminster (destroyed during the Second World War), with an inscription part of which reads: He originated the Electric Telegraph, High Speed Locomotion and Flashing Light Signalling.