Elizabeth Fry was one of those rare women whose “life was work.” Once having recognized the path of duty, she never left it; through illness and suffering, trouble and sorrow, she held fast to it, and the result was grand. For she was our first great prison reformer, the first to open the eyes of the nation to the alarming state of the prisons, the first to take active steps for their improvement.
She was born in Norwich on May 21, 1780. Her father, John Gurney, belonged to the Society of Friends; he was a popular, warm-hearted man, fond of his children, devoted to his wife. Elizabeth was the third of eleven children; when she was two years old, her father and mother moved to Earlham Hall, an old house standing in a well-wooded park, about two miles from Norwich. She was a nervous, delicate little child; every night, on going to bed, she would quake with fear at the prospect of being left alone in the dark, when the moment should come for the candle to be blown out. Sea-bathing, too, had its horrors for her. She was forced to bathe when they went to the sea-side, but at the sight of the sea she would begin to cry and tremble till she turned her back on it again. The child’s devotion to her mother was intense; she would often lie awake at night and cry at the thought that her mother might some day die and leave her, and her childish wish was that two big walls might fall and crush them both together. But the two big walls never did fall; when Elizabeth was but twelve, her mother died, leaving eleven children, the eldest barely seventeen, the youngest only two. Elizabeth was tall and thin; she had quantities of soft flaxen hair and a sweet face, but she was so reserved and quiet, that people thought her quite stupid. She was very fond of dancing and riding and any kind of amusement, and when she was a little older we hear of her as a “beautiful lady on horseback in a scarlet riding-habit.”
When she was eighteen a great Quaker preacher came to Norwich, and Elizabeth went with her six sisters to hear him. Hitherto she had cared little for Quaker meetings, but this time, as soon as the preacher began, her attention was fixed. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and “Betsy wept most of the way home,” says one of her sisters. From that day all love of amusement and pleasure seemed gone. New feelings had been stirred within her; she felt there was something more to live for than mere pleasure; a nobler spirit was moving within her, that showed her there lay work around her to be done, and work specially for her to do. And she soon found the work; an old man, who was dying, wanted comfort and care; a little boy called Billy from the village needed teaching. Slowly other little boys came to be taught, and in a few months she had a school of seventy. She taught them in an empty laundry, no other room being large enough.
Life went on thus till she was twenty. The more she saw of Quakers, the more firmly she believed they were right; she now wore their dress,—a plain slate-coloured skirt with a close handkerchief and cap, with no ornaments of any kind. In the summer of this year she married Joseph Fry, also a Quaker, engaged in business in London, where they accordingly went to live. Leaving her old home was a great trial to her, for the “very stones of the Norwich streets seemed dear to her.”
A new sphere of work now opened before her; she was surrounded by the poor, workhouses claimed her attention, the sick and dying begged for a sight of the simple Quaker woman, whom “to see was to love,” and whose gentle words always comforted them.
In 1809, Mr. and Mrs. Fry and their five children moved into the country for a time, for rest after the smoke and din of the crowded city life. Here Elizabeth Fry was very happy; she loved to live out of doors with her little children, to explain to them the growth of a flower, the structure of a bee’s wing or caterpillar; they would all go long rambles together with baskets and trowels to get ferns and wild flowers to plant in their garden at home. Then, refreshed and strengthened, she was again ready to take up her London work.
It was in 1813 that she first entered the prison at Newgate, and the special work of her life began. She found the prison and prisoners in a disgraceful state, and her womanly heart was touched with pity for the poor creatures who were compelled to live in these unhealthy wards and cells. Many had not sufficient clothing, but lived in rags, sleeping on the floor with raised boards for pillows. Little children cried for food and clothes, which their unhappy mothers could not give them. In the same room they slept, ate, cooked, and washed; in the bad air they fell ill, and no one came to nurse them or comfort them, no one came to show them how to live an honest, upright life, when their prison-life was over. Sick at heart, Elizabeth Fry went home, determined to help these miserable people in some way or other. Then trouble came to her. Her little Betsy, a lovely child of five, died, and long and bitter was her grief.
“Mama,” said the child, soon before her death, “I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better than everybody, and I love Almighty better than thee.”
Sorrow was making Elizabeth Fry more and more sympathetic and able to enter into the sufferings of those around her.
At last she was able to work again, and with her whole heart she set herself to improve the prisons.