For a short time he worked in Messrs. Backhouse's bank at Darlington, but he spent most of his life in Norfolk.
At the time of his death he was a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant for Norfolk.
He was one of the original members of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society which was founded in March 1869.
[4] Margaret was also his second cousin, daughter of Henry Edmund Gurney (1821-1905) and Jane née Birkbeck (1828-1888).
They had a son and three daughters: Gurney's first written contribution to ornithology was a letter to The Ibis on swallows which was published in 1866.