Pages for All Ages The Angel of Prisons

Some words and phrases to know before you read • doubts • banks • business • preach • certain • factories • poor and needy • criminals • daydream • jail, prison • confused • dignity

Elizabeth Fry felt full of doubts, but she acted as if the cities grew big. The factories made some people she was certain. She was shy, but she liked people rich. The big cities made life hard for many others. to listen to her. She loved to daydream, but she also Quakers had been in England for more than a loved to get things done. hundred years by the time Elizabeth was born. Her Her family called her “Betsy.” She had two older great grandparents were some of the earliest Quakers. sisters, four younger sisters, and four younger brothers. Many of the early Quakers were thrown into jail for Her parents were popular in the town of Norwich, speaking the truth. Some of them were beaten and England, where they lived. Both of Elizabeth’s parents even killed for living as Quakers. However, by the came from rich families that owned banks. time Elizabeth was born, lots of people liked the Quakers because they were so honest. They trusted Elizabeth was born in 1780 – a time when big, new Quakers and liked to do business with them. This factories were starting to pull lots of people to work made many Quakers rich. in them. Because so many workers lived near factories, Elizabeth’s parents were rich and popular Quakers. They went to parties and concerts and dances. They wore fine clothes and paid attention to ideas that were important in the world. They made sure all their children had good educations, even the girls. The children studied many subjects, including Latin, French, math, chemistry, and especially the Bible. Elizabeth was not a good student. She preferred to daydream. She never did learn to spell very well. Elizabeth’s brothers and sisters were lively and rowdy. Elizabeth often seemed quiet and sad. Her mother kept Elizabeth near her. Almost every day, Elizabeth’s mother went out in the town to help people who were poor and needy. Elizabeth often went along with her mother on those visits. When Elizabeth was twelve, her mother died. The work of running a house full of children became the job of the older girls. Elizabeth helped to raise her

16 Western Friend, May / June 2016 eight younger brothers and sisters, even though she was not very patient with them. They thought she was bossy. She also helped poor and needy people, the way her mother had done. Even though she had been a poor student herself, when Elizabeth was a teenager, she set up a little school for children who worked in a factory nearby. Elizabeth’s sisters and brothers began to think that their Quaker faith was not very important to them. Elizabeth felt deeply confused about this. On one hand, she did love fine clothes and going to concerts and dances. On the other The first thing Elizabeth did to help was to bring hand, she longed to be a true, simple Quaker. Her clothes for the children in the prison. Over the next sisters made fun of her for that. forty years, Elizabeth Fry tried to make sure that people in prisons were safe and healthy and treated Shortly before Elizabeth turned eighteen, an with dignity. She met with hundreds of people to get American Quaker traveled to England to preach. this work done, including the Queen and members With about two thousand other people, Elizabeth of Parliament. listened to William Savery preach against war, against slavery, and for peace with Native Americans. She All the while, Elizabeth Fry continued to have fell in love with his message, and she followed him doubts. She got married and had eleven children to London to hear him preach again. After hearing while she was doing her work for prisoners. Some Savery preach, even though her family was against people called her a bad mother because she was away it, Elizabeth started living life as a plain Quaker. She from home so often. She worried whether they might stopped going to concerts and dances, and she gave be right. But she kept working hard anyway. In the her time to her Quaker meeting and to the poor. end, her children grew into people she admired. And they felt proud that their mother became known as Elizabeth Fry is famous for the work she did in “the angel of prisons.” prisons. When she was twenty-two, she heard a Quaker speak about his visit to Newgate Prison in • Tell about a time when you saw that London. His story filled Elizabeth’s imagination with someone just kept doing something, even horrible pictures, and she felt like she needed to act. though other people made fun of them. She found a friend to go with her to visit the prison. • What are some of the reasons that we have Everybody else was against her plan. Going into a jails and prisons in the world? prison was just not something rich young ladies did. But Elizabeth was stubborn, and she went. • What are some different ways that people can help each other to follow the law and be The prison was horrifying. Three hundred women fair with each other? were crowded into two bare rooms with their children. The women cooked and washed and slept Portrait on page 16 from “Great Britain and Her Queen,” by on the cold hard floor. Some of them were violent Anne E. Keeling, 1887. Wood engraving on page 17 by Jerry criminals, and others were simply poor. Barrett, circa 1860. Both images are in the public domain.

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