Inspiring Christian Lives

Elizabeth Fry, 1780-1845

When Elizabeth Fry was eighteen she heard the American Quaker, William Savery, preach in Norwich. Elizabeth begged her father to invite Savery to dinner. Afterwards she wrote: "Today I felt there is a God. I loved the man as if he was almost sent from heaven - we had much serious talk and what he said to me was like a refreshing shower on parched up earth."

After meeting William Savery, Elizabeth decided to devote her energies to helping those in need. Over the next few years she collected old clothes for the poor, visited the sick and set up a Sunday School in her house where she taught local children to read. A Quaker herself, she also became active in setting up Quaker schools. In 1813 a friend of the Fry family, Stephen Grellet, visited Newgate Prison. Grellet was deeply shocked by what he saw but was informed that the conditions in the women's section was even worse. When Grellet asked to see this part of the prison, he was advised against entering the women's yard as they were so wild they would probably do him some physical harm. Grellet insisted and was appalled by the suffering that he saw.

When Grellet told Elizabeth Fry about the way women were treated in Newgate, she decided that she must visit the prison. Fry discovered 300 women and their children, huddled together in two wards and two cells. Although some of the women had been found guilty of crimes, others will still waiting to be tried. The female prisoners slept on the floor without nightclothes or bedding. The women had to cook, wash and sleep in the same cell. Afterwards she wrote that the "swearing, gaming, fighting, singing and dancing were too bad to be described".

Elizabeth Fry began to visit the women of Newgate Prison on a regular basis. She supplied them with clothes and established a school and a chapel in the prison. Later she introduced a system of supervision that was administered by matrons and monitors. The women now had compulsory sewing duties and Bible reading.

Elizabeth combined prison visiting with her role as wife and mother. In 1817 Elizabeth Fry and eleven other Quakers, formed the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. With influential friends, Elizabeth was able to campaign through parliament.

She was invited to give evidence to a House of Commons Committee on London Prisons. She told them how women slept thirty to a room in Newgate Prison, "each with a space of about six feet by two to herself". As she pointed out: "old and young, hardened offenders with those who had committed only a minor offence or their first crime; the lowest of women with respectable married women and maid-servants".

Elizabeth Fry’s work met with stiff resistance in Parliament, where, like in the country at large, there was overwhelming support for capital punishment. Some even accused her and her like of being ‘dangerous people’ because they encouraged the ‘criminal classes’. As a result of her pressure, eventually regular visits from prison chaplains, the pay of gaolers (rooting out corruption) and women warders for women’s prisons were all introduced. The reforms, though, did not apply to all prisons , because of entrenched attitudes. She was also involved in establishing a support system for the impoverished of Brighton, until bankruptcy led to scandalous and slanderous accusations. Although prison reform was her main concern she also campaigned for the homeless in London and improvements in the way patients were treated in mental asylums. Fry also promoted the reform of workhouses and hospitals.

Based on an article on www.schoolshistory.co.uk