(1780 - 1845)
Elizabeth Fry was a reformer, campaigner and philanthropist whose work did much to improve the physical misery and moral degradation of women prisoners. A devout Quaker, her religious beliefs inspired her work with the more unfortunate in society, and she was skilled in leveraging her influential family’s contacts to make her views heard in an era when it was highly unusual for a woman to do so.
Elizabeth Fry was born Elizabeth Gurney in Norwich in 1780. Both her parents were from banking families, and her father was a successful businessman. Elizabeth’s Quaker mother spent part of each day helping the poor. In 1800 she married Essex merchant Joseph Fry, also a Quaker. The couple moved to East Ham in London and had twelve children.
On hearing of the terrible conditions for women in Newgate Prison from a friend, Elizabeth made her own visit, and was horrified by what she saw. Elizabeth discovered 300 women and their children, huddled together in two wards and two cells, sleeping on the floor without nightclothes or bedding. Although some of the women had been found guilty of crimes, others will still waiting to be tried. Elizabeth began to visit the women of Newgate Prison on a regular basis, supplying them with clothes and establishing a school and a chapel in the prison.
Because of her work in Newgate, Elizabeth was invited to give evidence at a House of Commons committee on conditions in jails, with her campaigning eventually leading to the 1823 gaols act which set out to make reforms.
By the 1820s Elizabeth had become a well-known personality in a time when it was extremely unusual for a woman to be consulted by men for her professional knowledge. Elizabeth was strongly criticised for playing this role and she was attacked in the press for neglecting her home and family.
Elizabeth is best known for her work in prison reform, but she also championed a number of other social causes including opposition to capital punishment (which in those days could be handed down for around 200 offences, many of them relatively minor), conditions in asylums for the mentally ill and in workhouses, the homeless and the training of nurses. She died after a short illness in 1945, and her burial was attended by over 1000 people.
