The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Gurner, Henry Field
Gurner, Henry Field, sometime Crown solicitor of Victoria, was the second son of John Gurner, of Sydney, N.S.W., solicitor, who arrived in that colony in Feb. 1817 as chief clerk of the Supreme Court, with Judge (Barron) Field, the friend of Charles Lamb. He was born in Sydney on March 31st, 1819, and at the latter end of 1834 became a clerk in the Supreme Court Office at Sydney. Having resigned that appointment, he was in March 1841 admitted to practise as a solicitor in New South Wales. In 1841 he was appointed deputy registrar of the Supreme Court of New South Wales for the Port Phillip district, and accompanied Judge Willis to what is now Victoria. Mr. Gurner was the first person admitted as a solicitor in Melbourne; this was on May 9th, 1841, and in October of the same year he resigned his appointment as deputy registrar, entering upon the active practice of his profession as an attorney in Melbourne. In Jan. 1842 he was appointed to the office of Crown solicitor and clerk of the peace at Port Phillip, and in Sept. 1842 was made first town clerk of Melbourne, under the Act incorporating the town. In July 1851, upon the separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales, Mr. Gurner became Crown solicitor of the colony of Victoria, a post which he held for some twenty years. In 1841 he published the "Rules and Orders of the Supreme Court of New South Wales for the District of Port Phillip," in 1871 the "Practice of the Criminal Law of the Colony of Victoria," and in 1876 "Chronicles of Port Phillip." He died on April 17th, 1883.