Elizabeth Fry's Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence, and Government of Female Prisoners (1827)
Introduction
The Quaker, social and prison reformer Elizabeth Gurney Fry (1780-1845) published a book titled Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence, and Government of Female Prisoners in 1827. The publisher is John and Arthur Arch, located in Cornhill, London; J. Hatchard and Son, located in Piccadilly and S. Wilkin, located in Norwich. The publication was a practical guide on how to establish a moral and spiritual improvement of female inmates and a declaration of her beliefs about the role and behaviour of women (both of which varied according to class) in society.
Content
Fry’s introductory remark in Observations is a nod to the existence of separate sphere rhetoric - the idea that men and women belong in distinct spheres of society, with men being particularly fit for the workplace and women being particularly fit for the domestic domain. She offers a token apology for intruding into the public sphere through publication. Her brief admission of her “incompetency for the task of writing” and “reluctance in sending to the press” an account of the principles for visiting prisons is immediately followed by an assertion of competency as a philanthropist and reformer, her “long experience of the nature and effects of the system pursued by the [British Ladies’ Society for Visiting Prisons]” and the fact that she had been repeatedly requested to provide information on this, her area of expertise, “induced” her to compose this pamphlet (Fry 1). Elizabeth Fry uses contemporary rhetoric about the natural character and role of women to negotiate gendered distinctions between public and private in order to open up and explore spaces within the public sphere in which women could be active, as well as the resistance these efforts provoked from individuals who sought a more limited role for women in public life.
Elizabeth Fry continues by laying out her philosophy of a woman’s duty. She acknowledges that women are to fill the “station of a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, or a mistress of a family,” (3) but while she recognizes that they should not forsake these rightful roles of womanhood, she argues that women’s duties are not limited to “arranging laundries, kitchens, and such things” (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry volumn I 251-252). Instead, she contends, the gentleness, sympathy, compassion, serenity, capacity for firmness, and discerning character of women suits them a “more extensive field of usefulness,” namely, caring for “the helpless, the ignorant, the afflicted, or the depraved, of their own sex” (Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence, and Government of Female Prisoners 3). It is important to note that Elizabeth Fry’s challenge to separate sphere rhetoric does more than argue that women should not be limited to familial roles, but rather, she urges women to organize themselves into committees or societies dedicated to helping the less fortunate. By organizing women into formal societies, Fry envisions that the activities undertaken by members of these associations were public, not private functions, for she explicitly distinguishes the work done by societies such as the British Ladies’ Society for Visiting Prisons from the charitable acts of individual women on behalf of the poor in their neighbourhoods. Also, by organizing themselves to serve groups of individuals in need, not just the select individuals within one’s personal sphere of influence, Fry argues that women not only will fulfill the full measure of a woman’s duty, but in the process, they will have “nearly, if not quite, an equal influence on society at large” as men (2). By the time she wrote this in 1827, Fry and her colleagues had already demonstrated that this could be the case: in addition to alleviating the miserable conditions of individual prisoners under their care, their activities had brought public attention to the situation of prisoners. Some credit for the passing the 1823 Goals Act, which legislated minimum standards regarding prisoner care, can be attributed to the spotlight Fry and her associates brought to bear on the necessity for prison reform. The supervision of female prisoners by women officers, an innovation introduced by Fry at Newgate Prison, was specifically required under the Act’s provisions. Elizabeth Fry’s Observations is, in fact, more than a treatise on the necessity of redeeming depraved prisoners by turning them into respectable, morally righteous women. She is interested in turning these women into useful members of society, and her book is suffused with references that make clear that she had internalized the values prized by capitalists. Fry writes that prisoners must learn not just habits of morality, but also those of industry. These habits include order, method, and regularity, the “economical arrangement of time, and […] a suitable division of labor.” (6) Fry’s recommendation that ladies demonstrate confidence in the prisoners by entrusting them “with the care of various articles belonging to the committee” can also be seen as a mark of class interest in a society where employers desire workers who would not abscond with supplies or unfinished goods (22). With Observations, Fry fully embraced her celebrity, using it not just to advance prison reform but to make a larger claim for women’s participation in the public sphere.
For the socially conscious nineteenth-century evangelical woman, manufacturing the authority to engage in social reform was a complicated affair. Women who chose philanthropic employment outside their homes had to manage their public selves carefully lest their immersion in morally and physically dangerous conditions erode their status as pure-minded women. For instance, in Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence, and Government of Female Prisoners (1827), Elizabeth Fry tried to parlay such immersion into a specifically feminine brand of authority. She maintained that male magistrates “surely” need not “be on their guard against an undue influence” from the inmates, since they “only occasionally walk through a prison.” (Fry 69) Women, on the other hand, in their “constant inspection and superintending care,” had to be “at once wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (25) In this oddly cognizant phrase, Fry articulated a distinctively feminine position from which to know, staking out not only what it is possible for a woman to know, but also how she should go about knowing, or, equally importantly, not knowing it. A woman’s capacity to operate in dangerous conditions, Fry implied, requires a naively knowledgeable self: she must know enough to remain innocent.