Lives of Girls Who Became Famous

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Mrs. Fry's heart was constantly burdened with the scenes she witnessed. The penal laws were a caricature on justice. Men and women were hanged for theft, forgery, passing counterfeit money, and for almost every kind of fraud. One young woman, with a babe in her arms, was hanged for stealing a piece of cloth worth one dollar and twenty-five cents! Another was hanged for taking food to keep herself and little child from starving. It was no uncommon thing to see women hanging from the gibbet at Newgate, because they had passed a forged one-pound note (five dollars).

George Cruikshank in 1818 was so moved at one of these executions that he made a picture which represented eight men and three women hanging from the gallows, and a rope coiled around the faces of twelve others. Across the picture were the words, "I promise to perform during the issue of Bank-notes easily imitated ... for the Governors and Company of the Bank of England."

He called the picture a "Bank-note, not to be imitated." It at once created a great sensation. Crowds blocked the street in front of the shop where it was hung. The pictures were in such demand that Cruikshank sat up all night to etch another plate. The Gurneys, Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir James Mackintosh, all worked vigorously against capital punishment, save, possibly, for murder.

Among those who were to be executed was Harriet Skelton, who, for the man she loved, had passed forged notes. She was singularly open in face and manner, confiding, and well-behaved. When she was condemned to death, it was a surprise and horror to all who knew her. Mrs. Fry was deeply interested. Noblemen went to see her in her damp, dark cell, which was guarded by a heavy iron door. The Duke of Gloucester went with Mrs. Fry to the Directors of the Bank of England, and to Lord Sidmouth, to plead for her, but their hearts were not to be moved, and the poor young girl was hanged. The public was enthusiastic in its applause for Mrs. Fry, and unsparing in its denunciation of Sidmouth. At last the obnoxious laws were changed.

Mrs. Fry was heartily opposed to capital punishment. She said, "It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them"; it does not lead to reformation, and "does not deter others from crime, because the crimes subject to capital punishment are gradually increasing."

When the world is more civilized than it is to-day, when we have closed the open saloon, that is the direct cause of nearly all the murders, then we shall probably do away with hanging; or, if men and women must be killed for the safety of society, a thing not easily proven, it will be done in the most humane manner, by chloroform.

Mrs. Fry was likewise strongly opposed to solitary confinement, which usually makes the subject a mental wreck, and, as regards moral action, an imbecile. How wonderfully in advance of her age was this gifted woman!

Mrs. Fry's thoughts now turned to another evil. When the women prisoners were transported to New South Wales, they were carried to the ships in open carts, the crowd jeering. She prevailed upon government to have them carried in coaches, and promised that she would go with them. When on board the ship, she knelt on the deck and prayed with them as they were going into banishment, and then bade them a tender good by. Truly woman can be an angel of light.

Says Captain Martin, "Who could resist this beautiful, persuasive, and heavenly-minded woman? To see her was to love her; to hear her was to feel as if a guardian angel had bid you follow that teaching which could alone subdue the temptations and evils of this life, and secure a Redeemer's love in eternity."

At this time Mrs. Fry and her brother Joseph visited Scotland and the north of England to ascertain the condition of the prisons. They found much that was inhuman; insane persons in prison, eighteen months in dungeons! Debtors confined night and day in dark, filthy cells, and never leaving them; men chained to the walls of their cells, or to rings in the floor, or with their limbs stretched apart till they fainted in agony; women with chains on hands, and feet, and body, while they slept on bundles of straw. On their return a book was published, which did much to arouse England.