Biography on Elizabeth Fry
By: Hong Hai Nguyen (Ivi)
Elizabeth Fry (neé Gurney) (1780-1845) was an English prison and social reformer, a Quaker and a Christian philanthropist, who has been referred to as the “angel of prisons”. Throughout her life, she inspected over a hundred prisons in the United Kingdom and Europe, co-founded the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners, spoke out against capital punishments, advocated for female inmates and called attention to the need for halfway houses to help prisoners transition back into society. She was the first woman to give testimony before a Select Committee, doing so in 1818 and then again in 1835. Both resulted in major legislative reforms, the 1823 Gaols Act and the 1835 Prisons Act. As a woman in the early 19th century, Elizabeth Fry defined her role in society through prisons reform and activism. While pursuing her reforms, she challenged gender expectations of the time by campaigning for fair public policy. Her works are not only significant during her period of time but they are also crucial in the present day in order to give women the power and resources they deserve.
Early life
Elizabeth Gurney was born in Norwich, England on 21 May 1780 to a middle-class Quaker family. Her father, John Gurney (1749–1809), was a partner in Gurney bank, and her mother, Catherine Barclay Gurney (1775–1792), was a relative of the Barclays, who founded Barclays Bank. Elizabeth grew up in the country house Earlham Hall. After her mother died when she was 12, Elizabeth took an active role in bringing up her siblings. She obtained schooling from private governesses and tutors. Her father maintained a private library where she read the works of important social and political theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, William Godwin, and the great democratic theorist, Thomas Paine. This was the age of the American and French Revolutions, therefore, radical republican principles were regularly and keenly discussed in the family (Baxter, "Elizabeth Fry”).
When Elizabeth was 18, she was influenced by the humanitarian message of William Savery, an American Quaker who spoke of the importance of tackling poverty and injustice. In the next few months, she participated in a wide assortment of social activities and became aware for the first time of the extent of poverty, degradation, and misery that the lower classes then endured (Baxter, “Elizabeth Fry"). Elizabeth was inspired to become involved in helping local charities by donating clothing to the poor, caring for the sick and opening a school in her home from which she taught children to read.
In August 1800, she married Joseph Fry (1777-1861), who was a banker and Quaker. Between 1801 and 1816 the couple had ten children. In 1809, they moved to Plashet House in East Ham, London and an eleventh child was born in 1822 (Richmond, “Elizabeth Fry”).
Prison reform
In January 1813, Elizabeth Fry and Anna Buxton visited some prisoners in Newgate who were about to be executed (Fry 225). During this visit, Elizabeth Fry witnessed the horror of the conditions in which imprisoned women lived, stating: "All I tell thee is a faint picture of reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the furious manner and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness, which everything bespoke is really indescribable”. There were no toilets, just a bucket in the corner and prisoners had to pay for food, water, clothes and coal for a fire. Punishments for rich people were different from those for poor (Quakers in the Worlds, "Elizabeth Fry").
When she returned to Newgate prison in December 1816, her first innovation was the establishment of a small school for the prisoners’s children who were mostly under the age of seven. After discussions with the prisoners and meetings with the prison authorities, Elizabeth Fry and her female collaborators introduced a system of reformation: religious instruction, classification, paid employment and “women taking care of women” (Fry 323). Elizabeth Fry, unlike other early visitors, tended to concentrate on the behaviour of women rather than their moral corruptness. She promoted the idea of rehabilitation instead of harsh punishment which was taken on by the city authorities in London as well as many other authorities and prisons. She believed that, in order to properly carry out the womanly duty, women must not act individually but collectively, by formally organizing into committees and societies.
In April 1817, Elizabeth Fry with eleven women who are members of the Society of Friends, formed an "Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate”, which was the first nationwide women’s organization in Britain (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry 289). This group of women “pledged themselves to visit Newgate Prison on a regular basis, to teach female prisoners the Bible, to clothe female prisoners, and to provide funding for vocational materials and a resident matron” (Craig 143). Elizabeth Fry believes that women were called to fill traditional roles of being a mother and a wife, but she asserted that they also had an important role to fill in public life: caring for “the helpless, the ignorant, the afflicted, or the depraved, [particularly] those of their own sex” (Observations of the Siting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners 3).
In 1818, Elizabeth Fry gave evidence to a House of Commons committee on the conditions prevalent in British prisons, becoming the first woman to present evidence in Parliament. In the same year, she set out to tour prisons in England and Scotland to establish other Ladies’ Associations. In 1827, She published her book, Observations of the Siting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners. In the same year, Fry visited women prisoners in Ireland (Timpson, 82–99). Elizabeth also helped to start a movement for the abolition of transportation. Transportation was officially abolished in 1837, however, Elizabeth Fry was still visiting transportation ships until 1843 (Richmond, “Elizabeth Fry”).
As a woman in nineteenth-century Europe, by campaigning for humane treatment and better prison conditions, Elizabeth Fry challenged what society deemed as acceptable for a woman, tirelessly tried to disrupt gender roles and normality’s and ultimately reinvented what was presumed as appropriate female behaviour.
Other works
While Elizabeth Fry is best known for her prison reform activities, she was also involved in investigating and proposing reforms in mental asylums (The History of Elizabeth Fry Charity). Before her work at Newgate, Elizabeth, who was not yet twenty, inaugurated a small school at Earlham Hall which provided a rudimentary education to about 70 local children from poor and distressed families. She supplemented this endeavour by visiting to the children's homes where she took further steps to alleviate the hunger and sickness she discovered (Baxter, “Elizabeth Fry”). In 1824, during a visit to Brighton, she instituted the Brighton District Visiting Society (Quakers in the Worlds, "Elizabeth Fry"). The society arranged for volunteers to visit the homes of the poor and provide help and comfort to them. The plan was successful and was duplicated in other districts and towns across Britain. For more than 25 years she visited every convict ship leaving for Australia and promoted reform of the convict ship system. Elizabeth Fry also used her influential network and worked with other prominent Quakers to campaign for the abolition of the slave trade (Quakers in the Worlds, "Elizabeth Fry").
In 1840, Elizabeth Fry established the Institution for nursing Sisters in Whitechapel, London. She worked to improve nursing standards and established a nursing school that influenced her distant relative, Florence Nightingale. She worked for the education of working women, for better housing for the poor and was responsible for the establishment of soup kitchens (The History of Elizabeth Fry Charity).
Death and Legacy
Elizabeth Fry died from a stroke on the 12th of October 1845 aged 65 in Ramsgate. Her remains were interned at the Quaker Burial Ground in Barking. Wishing to commemorate her work, in 1925, the Lord Mayor of London founded an asylum in memory of Elizabeth at 195 Mare Street, Hackney - the Elizabeth Fry Refuge. It offered refuge to young women discharged from prison and became a hostel for women on probation which in 1949 was officially approved by the Home Office (The History of Elizabeth Fry Charity).
Elizabeth Fry was one of the social reformers honoured on an issue of UK commemorative stamps in 1976, the first non-royal woman to be featured on a British banknote (£5 note 2002-2016) and was featured on the Quaker Tapestry. In the East End, there are dedications to her at East Ham Library and Mare Street, Hackney. Her extensive diaries have been transcribed and studied.
