Mrs. E. R. Pitman - Elizabeth Fry

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As Mrs. Fry and the "Anna Buxton" referred to,--who was a sister of Sir
Thomas Fowell Buxton,--were about to enter this modern Inferno, the
Governor of Newgate advised the ladies to leave their watches in his
care lest they should be snatched away by the lawless wretches inside.
But no such hesitating, half-hearted, fearful charity was theirs. They
had come to see for themselves the misery which prevailed, and to dare
all risks; and we do not find that either Mrs. Fry or her companion lost
anything in their progress through the women's wards; watches and all
came away safely, a fresh proof of the power of kindness. The
revelations of the terrible woes of felon-life which met Mrs. Fry
stirred up her soul within her. She emphatically "clothed the naked,"
for she set her family to work at once making green-baize garments for
this purpose until she had provided for all the most destitute.

To remedy this state of things appeared like one of the labors of
Hercules. Few were hopeful of the success of her undertaking, while at
times even her undaunted spirit must have doubted. In John Howard's time
the prisons of England had been distinguished for vice, filth,
brutality, and suffering; and although some little improvement had taken
place, it was almost infinitesimal. Old castles, or gate-houses, with
damp, dark dungeons and narrow cells, were utilized for penal purposes.
It was common to see a box fastened up under one of the narrow,
iron-barred windows overlooking the street, with the inscription, "Pity
the poor prisoners," the alms being intended for their relief and
sustenance. Often the jail was upon a bridge at the entrance of a town,
and the damp of the river added to the otherwise unhealthy condition of
the place. Bunyan spoke, not altogether allegorically, but rather
literally, of the foul "den" in which he passed a good twelve years of
his life. Irons and fetters were used to prevent escape, while those who
could not obtain the means of subsistence from their friends, suffered
the horrors of starvation. Over-crowding, disease, riot, and obscenity
united to render these places very Pandemoniums.

It seemed almost hopeless to deal with ferocious and abandoned women.
One of them was observed, desperate with rage, tearing the caps from the
heads of the other women, and yelling like a savage beast. By so much
nearer as woman is to the angels, must be measured her descent into ruin
when she is degraded. She falls deeper than a man; her degradation is
more complete, her nature more demoralized. Whether Mrs. Fry felt
unequal just then to the task, or whether family affliction pressed too
sorely upon her, we do not know; her journal affords no solution of the
problem, but certain it is that some three years passed by before any
very active steps were taken by her to ameliorate to any decided extent
the misery of the prisoners.

But the matter seethed in her mind; as she mused upon it, the fire
burned, and the spirit which had to burst its conventional trammels and
"take up the cross" in regard to dress and speech, looked out for other
crosses to carry. Doing good became a passion; want, misery, sin and
sorrow furnished claims upon her which she would neither ignore nor
deny.

John Howard had grappled with the hydra before her, and finally
succumbed to his exertions. As the period of his labors lay principally
between the years 1774 and 1790, when the evils against which Mrs. Fry
had to contend were intensified and a hundred times blacker, it cannot
do harm to recall the condition of prisons in England during the last
quarter of the eighteenth century; that is, during the girlhood of
Elizabeth Fry. Possibly some echoes of the marvellous exertions of
Howard in prison reform had reached her Earlham home, and produced,
though unconsciously, an interest in the subject which was destined to
bear fruit at a later period. At any rate, the fact cannot be gainsaid
that she followed in his steps, visiting the Continent in the
prosecution of her self-imposed task, and examining into the most
loathsome recesses of prisons, lunatic asylums, and hospitals.

The penal systems of England had been on their trial; had broken down,
and been found utterly wanting. Modern legislation and philanthropy have
laid it down that _reform_ is the proper end of all punishment; hence
the "silent system," the "separate system," and various employments have
been adopted. Hence, too, arose the framing of a system of education and
instruction under the jail roof, so that on the discharge of prisoners
they might be fitted to earn their own maintenance in that world which
formerly they had cursed with their evil deeds. But it was not so in the
era of John Howard, nor of Elizabeth Fry. Then, justice made short work
with criminals and debtors. The former it hanged in droves, and left the
latter to literally "rot" in prison. Two systems of transportation have
been tried: the one previous to Howard's day succeeded in pouring into
the American plantations the crime and vice of England; whilst the
other, which succeeded him, did the same for Australia. After the breach
between the American colonies and the mother-country, the system of
transportation to the Transatlantic plantations ceased; it was in the
succeeding years that the foul holes called prisons, killed their
thousands, and "jail-fever" its tens of thousands.

Yet, in spite of hanging felons faster than any other nation in Europe,
in spite of killing them off slowly by the miseries of these holes,
crime multiplied more than ever. Gigantic social corruptions festered in
the midst of the nation, until it seemed as if a war which carried off a
few thousands or tens of thousands of the lower classes, were almost a
blessing. Alongside the horrible evils for which Government was
responsible, grew up multitudes of other evils against which it fought,
or over which it exercised a strong and somewhat tyrannical upper-hand.
In society there was a constant war going on between law and crime.
Extirpation--not reform--was the end aimed at; the prison officials of
that time looked upon a criminal as a helpless wretch, presenting fair
game for plunder, torture and tyranny. The records in Howard's journals,
and the annals of Mrs. Fry's labors, amply enlighten us as to the result
of this state of things.

In Bedford jail the dungeons for felons were eleven feet below the
ground, always wet and slimy, and upon these floors the inmates had to
sleep. At Nottingham the jail stood on the side of a hill, while the
dungeons were cut in the solid rock; these dungeons could only be
entered after descending more than thirty steps. At Gloucester there was
but one court for all prisoners, and, while fever was decimating them,
only one day-room. At Salisbury the prisoners were chained together at
Christmas time and sent in couples to beg. In some of the jails, open
sewers ran through corridors and cells, so that the poor inmates had to
fight for their lives with the vermin which nourished there. At Ely the
prison was in such a ruinous condition that the criminals could not be
safely kept; the warders, therefore, had had recourse to chains and
fetters to prevent the escape of those committed to their charge. They
chained prisoners on their backs to the floor, and, not content with
this, secured iron collars round their necks as well as placed heavy
bars across their legs. Small fear of the poor wretches running away
after that! At Exeter the county jail was the private property of a
gentleman, John Denny Rolle, who farmed it out to a keeper, and received
an income of twenty pounds per annum for it. Yet why multiply instances!
In all of them, dirt, cruelty, fever, torture and abuses reigned
unchecked. Prisoners had no regular allowance of food, but depended on
their means, family, or charity; the prisons were farmed by their
keepers, some of whom were women, but degraded and cruel; many innocent
prisoners were slowly rotting to death, because of their inability to
pay the heavy fees exacted by their keepers; while the sleeping-rooms
were so crowded at times, that it was impossible for the prisoners to
lie down all together for sheer lack of space. Torture was prohibited by
the law of England, but many inhuman keepers used thumb-screws and iron
caps with obnoxious prisoners, for the amusement of themselves and their
boon companions. Several cases of this kind are recorded.

So hideous an outcry arose against these horrors, that at last
Parliament interfered, and passed two bills dealing with prisoners and
their treatment. The first of these provided that when a prisoner was
discharged for want of prosecution he should be immediately set free,
without being called upon to defray any fees claimed by the jailer or
sheriff; while the second bill authorized justices of the peace to see
to the maintenance of cleanliness in the prisons. The first set at
liberty hundreds of innocent persons who were still bound because they
could not meet the ruinous fees demanded from them; while the second
undoubtedly saved the lives of hundreds more. These were instalments of
reform.

Thus it will easily be understood that whatever the condition of
Newgate and other English prisons was, at the date of Mrs. Fry's labors,
they were far better than in previous years. Some attempts had been made
to render these pest-houses less horrible; but for lack of wise,
intelligent management, and occupation for the prisoners, the wards
still presented pictures of Pandemonium. It needed a second reformer to
take up the work where Howard left it, and to labor on behalf of the
convicts; for in too many cases they were looked upon as possessing
neither right nor place on God's earth. In the olden days, some judges
had publicly declared their preference for hanging, because the criminal
would then trouble neither State nor society any further. But in spite
of Tyburn horrors, each week society furnished fresh wretches for the
gallows; whilst those who were in custody were almost regarded as
"fore-doomed and fore-damned."

During the interval which elapsed between Mrs. Fry's short visits to
Newgate in 1813, and the resumption of those visits in 1817, together
with the inauguration of her special work among the convicts, she was
placed in the crucible of trial. Death claimed several relatives; she
suffered long-continued illness, and experienced considerable losses of
property. All these things refined the gold of her character and
discovered its sterling worth. Some natures grow hard and sullen under
trial, others faithless and desponding, and yet others narrow and
reserved. But the genuine gold of a noble disposition comes out brighter
and purer because of untoward events; unsuspected resources are
developed, and the higher nobility becomes discernable. So it was with
Elizabeth Fry. The constitutional timidity of her nature vanished before
the overpowering sense of duty; and literally she looked not at the
seen, but at the unseen, in her calculations of Christian service. Yet
another part of her discipline was the ingratitude with which many of
her efforts were met. This experience is common to all who labor for the
public weal; and from an entry in her journal we can but conclude that
this "serpent's tooth" pierced her very sorely at times. "A constant
lesson to myself is the ingratitude and discontent which I see in many."
Many a reformer could echo these words. But the abiding trial seemed to
be the remembrance of the loss of her little daughter, Elizabeth, who
passed away after a week of suffering, and who was laid to rest in
Barking churchyard. The memory of this five-year old child remained with
her for many years a pure and holy influence, doubtless prompting her
to deal tenderly with the young strayed ones whom she met in her errands
of mercy. How often the memory of "the touch of a vanished hand, and the
sound of a voice that is still," influences our intercourse with the
living, so that while benefiting them we do it as unto and for the dead.

CHAPTER VI.

NEWGATE HORRORS AND NEWGATE WORKERS.

About Christmas 1816, or January 1817, Mrs. Fry commenced her leviathan
task in good earnest. The world had been full of startling events since
her first two or three tentative visits to Newgate; so startling were
they, that even in the refined and sedate quietude of Quakerism there
must have existed intense interest, excitement, and possibly fear. We
know from Isaac Taylor's prolific pen, how absorbing was the idea of
invasion by the French, how real a terror was Bonaparte, and how full of
menace the political horizon appeared. Empires were rising and falling,
wars and tumults were the normal condition of society; the Continent was
in a state of agitation and warfare. Napoleon, the prisoner of Elba, had
returned to Europe, collected an army, and, contesting at Waterloo the
strength of England and Prussia, had fallen. He was now watched and
guarded at St. Helena, while the civilized world began to breathe
freely. The mushroom kingdoms which he had set up were fast tottering,
or had fallen, while the older dynasties of Europe were feeling once
more secure, because the man who hesitated not to sacrifice vast myriads
of human lives to accomplish his own aggrandizement, was now bound, and,
like a tiger in chains, could do nought save growl impotently.

Meanwhile the tide of prison-life went on, without much variation.
Newgate horrors still continued; the gallows-crop never failed; and the
few Acts of Parliament designed to ameliorate the condition of the
prisoners in the jails had almost become dead letters. In 1815 a
deputation of the Jail Committee of the Corporation of London visited
several jails in order to examine into their condition, and to introduce
a little improvement, if possible, into those under their care. This
step led to some alterations; the sexes were separated, and the women
were provided with mats to sleep upon. Visitors were restrained from
having much communication with the prisoners, a double row of gratings
being placed between the criminals and those who came to see them.
Across the space between the gratings it was a common practice for the
prisoners to push wooden spoons, fastened to long sticks, in order to
receive the contributions of friends. Disgusting in its ways, vicious in
act and speech, the social scum which crowded Newgate was repulsive,
dangerous, and vile in the extreme.

It is evident that the circle to which Mrs. Fry belonged was still
interested in philanthropic labors on behalf of the criminal classes,
because we find that Sir Thomas F. Buxton, Mr. Hoare, and several other
friends were busy, in the interval between 1813 and 1816, in
establishing a society for the reformation of juvenile thieves. This
matter of prison discipline was therefore engaging the attention of her
immediate circle. Doubtless, while listening to them, she remembered
most anxiously the miserable women whom she had visited some three years
previously.

It seems that Mrs. Fry succeeded with the women by means of her care for
the children. Low as they were in sin, every spark of maternal affection
had not fled, and they craved for their little ones a better chance than
they had possessed themselves. To a suggestion by Mrs. Fry that a school
should be formed for the benefit of their little ones they eagerly
acceded. This suggestion she left with them for consideration, engaging
to come to a decision at the next visit.

At the next visit she found that the tears of joy with which they had
welcomed the proposition were not feigned. The women had already chosen
a school-mistress from among themselves. A young woman, named Mary
Cormer, who had, although fairly educated, found her way to prison for
stealing a watch, was the person chosen. It is recorded of this young
woman that she became reformed during her stay in Newgate, and so
exemplary did she behave in the character of teacher, that Government
granted her a free pardon; which, however, she did not live long to
enjoy.

It is pleasant to record that the officials aided and furthered this
good work. An empty cell was granted for the school-room, and was
quickly crammed with the youngest of the criminals. After this step had
been taken, a young Friend named Mary Sanderson made her appearance at
Newgate to assist, if it were possible, in the work, but was almost
terrified away again. She informed Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton of her
experiences and terrors at her first encounter with the women: "The
railing was crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the
front situations with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the
utmost vociferation." She felt as if she were going into a den of wild
beasts, and she well recollects quite shuddering when the door was
closed upon her, and she was locked in with such a herd of novel and
desperate companions.

Could lasting good be effected there? It seemed hopeless. Indeed, at
first it was scarcely dreamt of; but, the stone once set rolling, none
knew where it would stop. Marvellous to say, some of the prisoners
themselves asked for ministrations of this sort. Feeling that they were
as low down in the mire as they could be, they craved a helping hand;
indeed, entreated not to be left out from the benevolent operations
which Mrs. Fry now commenced. The officers of Newgate despaired of any
good result; the people who associated with Mrs. Fry, charitable as they
were, viewed her plans as Utopian and visionary, while she herself
almost quailed at their very contemplation. It also placed a great
strain upon her nervous system to attend women condemned to death. She
wrote: "I have suffered much about the hanging of criminals." And again:
"I have just returned from a melancholy visit to Newgate, where I have
been at the request of Elizabeth Fricker, previous to her execution
to-morrow at 8 o'clock. I found her much hurried, distressed and
tormented in mind. Her hands were cold, and covered with something like
the perspiration which precedes death, and in an universal tremor. The
women who were with her said she had been so outrageous before our
going, that they thought a man must be sent for to manage her. However,
after a serious time with her, her troubled soul became calmed." Another
entry in the same journal casts a lurid light upon the interior of
Newgate. "Besides this poor young woman, there are also six men to be
hanged, one of whom has a wife near her confinement, also condemned, and
seven young children. Since the awful report came down he has become
quite mad from horror of mind. A straight waistcoat could not keep him
within bounds; he had just bitten the turnkey; I saw the man come out
with his hand bleeding as I passed the cell. I hear that another who has
been tolerably educated and brought up, was doing all he could to harden
himself through unbelief, trying to convince himself that religious
truths were idle tales." Contemporary light is cast upon this matter by
a letter which the Hon. G.H. Bennett addressed to the Corporation of
London, relative to the condition of the prison. In it this writer
observed:--

A man by the name of Kelly, who was executed some weeks back for
robbing a house, counteracted, by his conversation and by the jests
he made of all religious subjects, the labors of Dr. Cotton to
produce repentance and remorse among the prisoners in the cells;
and he died as he lived, hardened and unrepenting. He sent to me
the day before his execution, and when I saw him _he maintained the
innocence of the woman convicted with him_ (Fricker, before
mentioned), asserting that not her, but a boy concealed, opened
the door and let him into the house. When I pressed him to tell me
the names of the parties concerned, whereby to save the woman's
life, he declined complying without promise of a pardon. I urged as
strongly as I could the crime of suffering an innocent woman to be
executed to screen criminal accomplices; but it was all to no
effect, and he suffered, maintaining to the last the same story.
With him was executed a lad of nineteen or twenty years of age,
whose fears and remorse Kelly was constantly ridiculing.

About this time, Mrs. Fry noted in her journal the encouragement she had
received from those who were in authority, as well as the eager and
thankful attitude of the poor women themselves. Kindred spirits were
being drawn around her, ready to participate in her labors of love. In
one place she wrote almost deprecatingly of the publicity which those
labors had won; she feared notoriety, and would, had it been possible,
have worked on alone and unheralded. But perhaps it was as well that
others should learn to cooeperate; the task was far too mighty for one
frail pair of hands, while the increased knowledge and interest among
the upper classes of society assisted in procuring the "sinews of war."
For this was a work which could not be successfully carried on without
pounds, shillings and pence. Clothing, books, teachers, and even
officers had to be paid for out of benevolent funds, for not an idea of
the necessity for such funds had ever crossed the civic mind.

A very cheering item, in April, 1817, was the formation of a ladies'
society under the title of "An Association for the Improvement of the
Female Prisoners in Newgate." Eleven Quakeresses and one clergyman's
wife were then banded together. We cannot find the names of these good
women recorded anywhere in Mrs. Fry's journal. The object of this
association was: "To provide for the clothing, instruction, and
employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the
Scriptures, and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of
sobriety, order and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable
whilst in prison, and respectable when they leave it." Thus, stone by
stone the edifice was being reared, step by step was gained, and
everything was steadily advancing towards success. The magistrates and
corporation of the city were favorable, and even hopeful; the jail
officials were not unwilling to cooeperate, and ladies were anxious to
take up the work. The last thing which remained was to get the assent
and willing submission of the prisoners themselves to the rules which
_must_ be enforced, were any lasting benefit to be conferred; and to
this last step Mrs. Fry was equal.

On a Sunday afternoon, quickly following the formation of the
association, a new and strange meeting was convened inside the old
prison walls. There were present the sheriffs, the ordinary, the
governor, the ladies and the women. Doubtless they looked at each other
with a mixture of wonder, incredulity, and surprise. The gloomy
precincts of Newgate had never witnessed such a spectacle before; the
Samaritans of the great city no longer "passed by on the other side,"
but, at last, had come to grapple with its vice and degradation.

Mrs. Fry read out several rules by which she desired the women to abide;
explaining to them the necessity for their adherence to these rules, and
the extent to which she invited cooeperation and assistance in their
enforcement. Unanimously and willingly the prisoners engaged to be bound
by them, as well as to assist each other in obedience. It will interest
the reader to know what these rules were. They were:--

1. That a woman be appointed for the general supervision of the women.

2. That the women be engaged in needlework, knitting, or any other
suitable employment.

3. That there be no begging, swearing, gaming, card-playing,
quarrelling, or universal conversation. That all novels, plays, and
other improper books be excluded; that all bad words be avoided, and
any default in these particulars be reported to the matron.

4. That there be a good yard-keeper, chosen from among the women, to
inform them when their friends come; to see that they leave their work
with a monitor when they go to the grating, and that they do not spend
any time there except with their friends. If any woman be found
disobedient in these respects, the yard-keeper is to report the case to
the matron.

5. That the women be divided into classes of not more than twelve, and
that a monitor be appointed to each class.

6. That the monitors be chosen from among the most orderly of the women
that can read, to superintend the work and conduct of the others.

7. That the monitors not only overlook the women in their own classes,
but, if they observe any others disobeying the rules, that they inform
the monitor of the class to which such persons may belong, who is
immediately to report them to the matron, and the deviations be set down
on a slate.

8. That any monitor breaking the rules shall be dismissed from her
office, and the most suitable in the class selected to take her place.

9. That the monitors be particularly careful to see that women come
with clean hands and faces to their work, and that they are quiet during
their employment.

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