15
Elizabeth Fry
Quaker Prison Reformer
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness, but when they did, she was astonished by what she saw. Nearly three hundred women were packed into two rooms, most of them in tattered rags, their hair matted, faces streaked with grime. Some were attempting to cook in the cramped quarters, while others hunched over buckets of dirty water, trying to do their washing. Many sprawled motionless on the filthy straw. As the stench of unwashed bodies filled the frigid air, the woman struggled to resist the urge to hold a handkerchief over her nose. Babies screamed, and as she stood there surveying the scene, she watched as two prisoners stripped off the clothes from a dead infant to clothe a baby still living.
Elizabeth Fry left London’s Newgate Prison that day, went home, bathed, and changed into fresh clothing. The next day she returned, this time with armloads of flannel baby clothes, blankets, and clean, thick straw. She and a friend distributed the supplies, comforted the mothers, and helped to dress the babies in warm flannel. Her lifelong ministry as a prison reformer had begun.
Transformation
Elizabeth wasn’t an obvious candidate for such grueling work. She was considered “delicate” as a child, and illness, anxiety, and depression plagued her from youth through her old age. She suffered from nervousness, stomach upset, and relentless toothaches, symptoms that isolated her from both her peers and her siblings, who also found her socially awkward and withdrawn. After her mother’s death when Elizabeth was thirteen, the young girl’s self-isolation intensified, and “her dark moods hung like thunder-clouds over the house and created an oppressive atmosphere.”1
Elizabeth also struggled spiritually. She was inclined toward religion yet constantly battled what she considered worldly temptations and was torn between duty and pleasure. When she allowed herself to enjoy such pleasures as dancing and socializing, she was quick to reprimand herself in her journal for succumbing to such frivolity.
On the other hand, Elizabeth also struggled against periods of skepticism. “My mind is so much inclined to scepticism and enthusiasm that if I argue and doubt I shall be a total sceptic,” she wrote in her journal. “If on the contrary, I give way to it and, as it were, wait for religion I may be led away.”2
In the midst of this quandary, Elizabeth met the American Quaker William Savery when he arrived in England to preach at a Meeting of Friends. As she sat in the front row and listened to Savery advocate for peace, Elizabeth was transfixed. Not only did Savery spark a new and exciting religious fervor in her, she was also attracted to him, even though he was married. “I always feel quite a palpitation at my heart at the sound of his voice,” she admitted in her journal. Elizabeth realized that religion and her feelings for Savery were dangerously connected. “I shall always love religion through him but must always love it away from him,” she wrote before leaving London for her hometown of Earlham.3
Elizabeth’s father and siblings were alarmed by her sudden piousness. It was obvious she had been transformed. She resisted luxuries, refused to shop for a new silk gown with her sisters, read the Bible constantly, abstained from dancing and singing, and began to attend Meetings twice on Sunday in the tradition of the Plain Quakers. Yet she was torn, not wanting to alienate her family by adopting the bonnet and “thee” and “thou” language of the Quakers she admired. Although she succumbed to her family’s pressure and gave in to dancing and parties from time to time, for the most part Elizabeth stayed firm in her aspirations to adopt the Plain Quaker life. “Even acting right will sometimes bring dissensions in a family,” she reassured herself in her journal.4 She finally convinced her family that her Quakerism was no passing whim. By the time she met her future husband, banker and Quaker Joseph Fry, whom she married in 1800, Elizabeth was a Plain Quaker in heart, speech, and dress.
Restlessness . . . and Release
Elizabeth did not adapt well to married life. For starters, she found the Fry family coarse, narrow-minded, and not nearly religious enough for her. Also, she was irritated by her husband’s lack of business finesse, his constant humming, his interest in chess and nonreligious reading material, and his inclination to spend money frivolously. She was bored, restless, and agitated; frustrated by her inability to manage the servants; and exhausted from hosting frequent dinner parties and house guests.
Motherhood did nothing to ease her dissatisfaction. After nearly every birth, Elizabeth suffered from postpartum depression that often lasted for months. She was an anxious mother who fretted over every ailment. By the time Elizabeth was twenty-four, she had three children under the age of five and questioned whether she would ever have a role beyond that of wife and mother. “It does appear to me as if I might become the careworn and oppressed mother,” she wrote in her journal.5 Later, on her eighth wedding anniversary, she reflected, “Various trials of faith and patience have been permitted me; my course has been very different from what I expected, and instead of being, as I had hoped, a useful instrument in the Church militant, here I am a careworn wife and mother, outwardly nearly devoted to the things of this life!”6
Her father’s death in 1809, however, changed the course of Elizabeth’s life. Although she had regularly attended Quaker Meetings up to this point, Elizabeth had never testified publicly. The few times she had felt inclined to speak at a Meeting, she was so overcome with anxiety that her body trembled uncontrollably and she feared she would faint. Her father’s death released her from his lifelong disapproval of her religious choices and psychologically freed her to speak. She felt, she wrote, “like a bottle that has been corked up and pressed down and now there is an opening inside, there is much to run out.” As she wrote the day her father was buried, “I think this will make way for me in some things that have been long on my mind.”7 Shortly after her father’s funeral, Elizabeth began to speak at Meetings, a practice she continued for the rest of her life.
Mother, Minister, Prison Reformer, and More
In 1811, one month after giving birth to her seventh child, Elizabeth was formally acknowledged as a minister by the Society of Friends. While her brothers John and Daniel disapproved of her public speaking and her sisters criticized her for neglecting her family, her husband supported her, taking on more and more of the household responsibilities while Elizabeth traveled farther from home. When Stephen Grellet, a French aristocrat who had settled in America and converted to the Society of Friends, visited London’s Newgate Prison in 1813 and surveyed the appalling conditions, he immediately summoned Elizabeth, who was known by then for her compassion for the city’s poor. By 1817 she had firmly established herself as London’s foremost prison reformer.
Not only did Elizabeth advocate for better prison conditions, including more space and adequate clothing and food, she also persuaded the authorities to allow her to launch an education program for the imprisoned women and their children. And since the male authorities refused to help her run the school, she organized the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners at Newgate. This committee of twelve Quaker women alternated daily visits to the prison to run the program, which included an introduction to the Scriptures and a work-for-pay initiative that enabled the prisoners to earn a few shillings a week for their needlework. Elizabeth also enlisted the inmates’ unanimous consent when it came to instituting the program’s twelve rules, which included appointing a supervising matron; assigning specific work tasks; allotting a period in the morning and evening for reading Scripture; and forbidding all begging, cursing, gaming, card playing, quarrelling, immoral conversation, and improper reading material such as novels and plays. Each rule was voted on separately by a show of hands—a cooperative practice that was unheard of at the time. These rules were later adapted for use in prisons across Europe.
As her work in the prisons progressed, Elizabeth grew increasingly opposed to the death penalty. At the time, criminals could be executed for more than two hundred offenses, including stealing something as small as a pair of stockings or passing a forged bank note. Elizabeth personally but unsuccessfully campaigned for Charlotte Newman and Mary Ann James, who were hanged for forgery. A year later, she and her brother John advocated for the life of one of her favorite prisoners, Harriet Skelton, a maid who was later executed for passing forged bank notes. Elizabeth considered capital punishment an evil practice that produced evil results, a declaration she made to the House of Commons Committee on London Prisons. The committee listened to her testimony, but it didn’t change their minds.
Elizabeth’s successful prison reform made her famous across Britain and beyond, but it also provoked the ire of her critics. Village gossipers and the national media alike suggested that the Frys had sent six of their nine children off to relatives so that Elizabeth would be free to pursue her prison work. And while it was true that several of the Fry children lived away from home for a few months, it was because the family was suffering financially. That said, Elizabeth never made excuses for herself when it came to her choices. She believed prison reform was her divine calling, and she allowed nothing—not her own health, her family, or public opinion—to stand in the way.
In 1827 Elizabeth published a small book entitled Observations on the Visiting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners, in which she advocated for the role of women in society. “No person will deny the importance attached to the character and conduct of a woman in all her domestic and social relations, when she is filling the station of a daughter, sister, a wife, a mother or a mistress of a family,” she wrote. “But it is a dangerous error to suppose that the duties of females end here.”8 Elizabeth suggested that women could make a profound impact in ministering not only to female prisoners but also to those in hospitals, asylums, and workhouses. There was much more work to be done, Elizabeth acknowledged, so why not encourage those with so much compassion for their own gender to be useful? It was a radical proposal, and one that suggests Elizabeth may have viewed her work as a personal necessity as well as a divine calling.
Forging Ahead with Reform
The Fry family suffered a major setback in 1828 when they were forced to declare their business, Frys Bank, bankrupt. Rumors flew, and Elizabeth herself was accused of withdrawing money from her husband’s bank to fund the Newgate Association and other charities. While waiting for the bailiffs to arrive to take an inventory of the property, Elizabeth took note of her surroundings, stunned that she no longer owned anything, including the house itself. Yet at the end of the day, despite the fact that her home, land, and furniture were all confiscated, she thanked God for his blessings. The following Sunday, she stood in the Meeting and testified that she loved and trusted God in times of adversity as well as prosperity.
Although her siblings generously gave the Frys a substantial amount of money, they were forced to fold their bank entirely and relinquish their still-viable tea- and coffee-importing business to Elizabeth’s brothers, with Joseph staying on as a salaried employee. They also moved from their rambling country house to a suburban home in West Ham, offered to them by Elizabeth’s brother Samuel. Worse than the financial ruin, though, was the public disgrace. Six months after declaring bankruptcy, Joseph Fry was formally disowned by the Religious Society of Friends. Elizabeth, though still allowed to attend Meetings and participate in the Yearly Meeting, was acutely aware of her diminished position. Still, she was a minister, a calling she would not abandon. Not long after the financial debacle, she ignored the warnings of her siblings, who insisted it was improper for her to continue her religious work, and departed for Stamford alone via stagecoach to visit yet another prison.
After her death from a stroke in 1845, Elizabeth’s daughters scoured forty-four volumes of her journals to remove all traces of their mother’s struggles and weaknesses. She was canonized by biographers and viewed by many as a saint. Yet while the original, unedited versions of these journals and the biographical portraits produced in more recent years divulge Elizabeth’s flaws, they also reveal a more complex, real, relatable woman. It’s in the spotlight of these very weaknesses and character flaws that we see and relate to the true Elizabeth Fry. She struggled her entire life with anxiety and depression. She wrestled with her faith as well as with her role as a wife and mother, and she suffered the criticism of many who disagreed with everything from her prison reforms to her parenting. Yet she persevered, courageously defying societal expectations, weathering sharp and often vicious criticism, and forging ahead, determined to fulfill what she believed was her God-given calling. Sometimes, as in the case of Elizabeth Fry, God calls us to step out of our comfort zones. The choice is ours to answer yes.