TJ - The Publication for Learning and Development

Great thinkers

By Sue Mennell (March 2008 Issue)
0 Comments Comments
Article Rating:

Poor Best

Email to a friend | Print Version

BACKGROUND: Elizabeth Fry is one of the most famous daughters of Norwich. She was the third child of 12 in a Quaker family. Her father, John Gurney, was a successful banker and businessman. Her mother, Catherine, who Fry cited as the most influential person in her life, believed girls should be educated as well as boys. Catherine told her children stories from the Bible and read them Psalms. She also took them with her when she visited the sick and poor in the district.

The young Fry avoided attending worship whenever she could but, after hearing the American Quaker William Savery speak, she began to understand true worship and gradually adopted the clothing and language of the plain Quaker.

She struggled with her faith and, although she found strength in prayer, she used her practical skills to better effect by helping people. She began by running a Sunday school for the children of Norwich factory workers.

In 1800, she married Joseph Fry. His family were wealthy tea, coffee and spice merchants and later opened a bank. His forward thinking allowed her to take up activities outside the home and she began visiting the Islington Workhouse to teach the children there. She became more active in the business of the Society of Friends and, acknowledged for her spoken ministry, began travelling to Meetings for Worship around the country.

In 1813, Simon Grellet, a French aristocrat and Quaker, was given permission to visit British prisons. He was horrified at what he found at Newgate women’s prison and asked Fry for her help.

At Newgate, Fry found women prisoners and children in cramped and filthy conditions. Prisoners convicted of serious or violent crimes were kept alongside those yet to be tried or convicted of minor offences. There was no bedding and she found two prisoners stripping the clothes from a dead baby to clothe another.

With the help of other women Friends, Fry supplied the prisoners with fresh straw to lie on and warm clothes for the women and babies.

The birth of two of her 12 children and the death of another, four-year-old Betsy, meant that she did not return to Newgate prison until just before Christmas 1816. After gaining the agreement of the prisoners, she set up a committee – 11 women Quakers and the wife of a clergyman – to convince the prison governor to agree to a school for the children of the prisoners.

INFLUENCE: Fry came to have extraordinary influence for a woman of her time. In 1818, she was the first woman to give evidence to a committee of the House of Commons on London prisons.

Following her intervention, prisoners sentenced to transportation to the colonies were no longer taken shackled in open wagons to the ships but, instead, were taken in closed carriages to protect them from the crowds. She also provided each prisoner with a bag of essential items. Over the next 20 years she regularly visited the convict ships.

She set up district visiting societies to work with the poor, and a ladies committee to offer hot soup and a bed to homeless women and children. Ladies committees were later set up throughout Britain and Europe. She established libraries for coastguards and training for nurses: nurses trained at Fry’s school accompanied Florence Nightingale to the Crimea.

Queen Victoria granted her an audience and donated money to help with her charitable work. Towards the end of her life, Fry travelled in Europe, meeting royal families and telling them about her work. She also dined with the King of Prussia, who visited her home.

Not all of her ideas made her popular. Several of Fry’s ideas were incorporated in the new Prison Act 1823, resulting in local authorities being required to spend more on prisons. This led to several authorities banning “meddling women” from visiting prisons.

SUMMARY: Fry achieved a great deal, not only to highlight and improve conditions for prisoners, but also to challenge the image of respectable femininity in Victorian England and to raise the appeal of the Quaker faith.

Sue Mennell is editor of TJ Online. If you would like to nominate a ‘Great Thinker’, please send your nomination to her at sue@trainingjournal.com

We have only displayed above the opening paragraph of this article. If you are a TJ subscriber, login now so you can download a PDF of this article in full, free of charge. For non-subscribers the PDF can be purchased for £9.00 see the "Buy Now" Option above.

Click here for a free 30 day trial to Training Journal

Back to top | Current TJ

 

Readers Comment

Comment on this story here >

Be the first to comment on this news story