MRS. FRY, the prison reformer.

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to investigate the wretched condition of the English prisons, and to determine upon a life-long effort to ameliorate it. Dirt and disease abounded; the separation of men and women was imperfect; no useful occupation was provided for them, and the worst vices were suffered to prevail unchecked. About Christmas, 1806, she took up her burden in earnest, after much preliminary inquiry, and began a series of visits to the female prisoners in Newgate. Observing that the children were pining miserably for want of proper food, air, and exercise, she addressed herself to the mothers, and so wrought upon their better feelings that they agreed to cooperate with her in establishing a school. A young woman, one of themselves, was chosen as mistress; and Mrs. Fry obtained from the authorities the use of an unoccupied cell for the schoolroom. Her next step was to enlist in the work some of her friends; so that the education of the children, and more particularly their religious teaching, might be fitly conducted and regularly carried on. Let it not be thought that this was an easy or a pleasant task. A prison was then literally "a den of wild beasts;" and to women delicately nurtured and of refined tastes, like Mrs. Fry, the scenes it presented were inexpressibly painful. "It was in our visits to the school," she said, "where some of us attended almost every day, that we were witnesses to the dreadful proceedings that went forward on the female side of the prison-the begging, swearing, gaming, fighting, singing, dancing, dressing up in men's clothes; the scenes are too bad to be described, so that we did not think it suitable to admit young persons with us." Mrs. Fry was conscious of much disgust, and even of actual loathing; but in her enthusiasm for her good work, and the power of her loving charity, she conquered these natural feelings. It has been said that revolutions are not made with rose-water; and certain it is that no reform was ever accomplished by philanthropists of the kid-glove school. When good is to be done, we must go down into the pool, like the angel at Bethesda, and trouble the waters.

Mrs. Fry was exposed to much discouragement, and the difficulties which lay in her path must have been insuperable to any but a woman of the greatest energy. She succeeded at last in forming An Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate," whose objects were: "To provide for

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SUCCESS OF THE WORK.

the clothing, the instruction, and the employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety, and industry which may render them. docile and peaceable whilst in prison and respectable when they leave it." And the result, in ten months, is thus stated by Mrs. Fry:-"Our rules have certainly been occasionally broken, but very seldom; order has been generally observed. I think I may say we have full power amongst them, for one of them said it was more terrible to be brought up before me than before the judge, though we use nothing but kindness. I have never punished a woman during the whole time, or even proposed a punishment to them; and yet I think it is impossible, in a well-regulated house, to have rules more strictly attended to than they are, as far as I order them, or our friends in general. With regard to our work, they have made nearly twenty thousand articles of wearing apparel, the generality of which is supplied by the slop-shops, which pay very little. Excepting three out of this number of articles that were missing, which we really do not think owing to the women, we have never lost a single thing. They knit from about sixty to a hundred pairs of stockings and socks every month; they spin a little. The earnings of work, we think, average about eighteenpence per week for each person. This is generally spent in assisting them to live and helping to clothe them. For this purpose they subscribe out of their small earnings of work about four pounds a month, and we subscribe about eight, which keeps them covered and decent. Another very important point is the excellent effect we have found to result from religious education; our habit is constantly to read the Scriptures to them twice a day; many of them are taught, and some of them have been enabled to read a little themselves. It has had an astonishing effect: I never saw the Scriptures received in the same way, and to many of them they have been entirely new, both the great system of religion and of morality contained in them; and it has been very satisfactory to observe the effect upon their minds. When I have sometimes gone and said it was my intention to read, they would flock upstairs after me, as if it were a great pleasure I had to afford them."

We are not writing, however, a history of Mrs. Fry's philan

A LIFE OF ACTIVITY.

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thropic labours. We shall not dwell on her exertions to procure the abolition of capital punishment for crimes affecting property, or on her efforts to promote the religious education of the poor. Her special vocation was the reform of the interior discipline of our prisons on wise and humane principles. To this she gave her life, her talents, her energies, her means; and not without good fruit. Both at home and abroad her influence achieved the greatest results; and her example encouraged many noble women to follow in the same path of well-doing, and, as teachers of ragged-schools and district visitors, to contribute towards the improved social condition of the "lower orders." The admirable arrangements she had been the means of introducing into Newgate were subsequently adopted in all the metropolitan, and most of the county and borough, gaols. In conjunction with her brother, Joseph John Gurney, she personally visited and carefully examined the prisons, lunatic asylums, penitentiaries, and refuges of the United Kingdom, and afterwards the most important institutions of a similar kind on the Continent. Even in the building and construction of prisons she effected many beneficial changes, and in the transportation and treatment of convicts she succeeded in carrying out numerous improvements. But wherever distress, wherever poverty and ignorance existed, there Elizabeth Fry saw a work to be done. No case of wretchedness came to her notice that she did not attempt to relieve. No poor supplicant ever told his tale to her in vain. She seemed to live only for others; her career was one lofty epic of well-doing. Thus, during a visit to Jersey, rendered necessary by domestic circumstances, she contrived to reform the prison and hospital, and to establish a district society; and a day at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, spent in the neighbourhood of the Coast Guard station, suggested to her the great undertaking of providing libraries for all the Coast Guard stations in Great Britain; an undertaking beset with difficulties, but in which her perseverance never relaxed until it had been fully accomplished. With all her enthusiasm, Mrs. Fry was pre-eminently practical. She was no believer in Utopias, moral or political; her plans were always carefully considered, and involved neither impossibilities nor improbabilities; and her attention to details would have graced the most skilful administrator. And great as

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A WOMAN's duties.

was her courage, it was not greater than her tact. She did not yield to prejudices, but she did not unnecessarily excite them. Hence it is noticeable that all her reforms were conducted to a triumphant issue with the cordial co-operation of the authorities whom they concerned. Nor did she go out of her way to seek work; she took that which lay close to her hand, holding no exaggerated or unreal theories of woman's mission. She was fully persuaded that every woman had her place in the world, and that in filling it she discharged her responsibility. A woman's primary duties she regarded as belonging to her home and family; but she was not the less convinced that to all a wider sphere of usefulness was open. She appreciated the usual charities of gentlewomen-their visits to the sick, the destitute, and the aged, their attention to the village schools; but she regretted that so few completed the work of mercy by following the widow or disabled when necessity drove them to the workhouse, or by "caring for the workhouse school, that resort of the orphaned and forsaken, less attractive, perhaps, than the school of the village, but even more requiring oversight and attention."

We shall select a single scene from the long and varied drama of her life, in illustration of the nature of her labours, and the mingled humility, earnestness, and moral intrepidity of her character. On the 31st of January 1842, the King of Prussia met Mrs. Fry at Newgate, and afterwards lunched with her at her residence at Upton. Her account of the day's incidents runs as follows:

"We set off about eleven o'clock, my sister Gurney and myself, to meet the King of Prussia at Newgate. I proceeded with the Lady Mayoress to Newgate, where we were met by many gentlemen. My dear brother and sister Gurney and Susannah Corder being with me was a great comfort. We waited so long for the King that I feared he would not come ; however, at last he arrived, and the Lady Mayoress and I, accompanied by the Sheriffs, went to meet the King at the door of the prison. He appeared much pleased to meet our little party; and after taking a little refreshment, he gave me his arm, and we proceeded into the prison and up to one of the long wards, where everything was prepared; the poor women round the table, about sixty of them, many of our ladies' committee, and some others; also numbers of gentle