Elizabeth Fry was a Quaker who campaigned in the first half of the 19th century for the improvement of prison conditions, especially for women. She became famous for her philanthropic work and encouraged a social conscience among the wealthy classes for the plight of the poor and underprivileged.

Key Facts about Elizabeth Fry

Born 1780, dies 1845

A Quaker who worked for prison reform

An early female activist for social justice

A Short Biography of Elizabeth Fry

Prison is never a great place to end up, but there was a time when it was a living hell. It was appallingly overcrowded, unspeakably squalid and so disease-ridden that a prison-sentence could soon become a death-sentence. Few people seemed to care, until one day in 1812 the wife of a London banker went to the notorious Newgate prison. Her name was Elizabeth Fry.

Elizabeth Gurney was born in Norwich into a Quaker family on the 21st of May, 1780. Her father John Gurney had founded Gurney’s bank in Norwich ten years earlier with his brother. Her mother, Catherine, came from the Barclay family and by the end of the century Gurney’s had merged with Barclays Bank. Elizabeth was one of the older children, so after her mother died when she was just 12 some of the responsibility for raising the other children in the family fell to her. Her sister Louisa was to go on to write on education and promote the positive virtues of childhood.

In 1800 Elizabeth married Joseph Fry, also a banker and a Quaker and the new couple moved to London where they lived for a time in the City, before eventually moving out to what was then the rural area of Forest Gate. They had 11 children. Elizabeth was active in the Quaker church as a preacher.

Around 1810 she met Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier, who she knew as Stephen Grellet. He had been in the personal guard of King Louis XVI and had narrowly escaped execution during the French Revolution. He had become a Quaker and travelled to North America where he made his home in Burlington, New Jersey. He was an active social reformer and had met with Kings, Popes and Czars to further his reforms in education, hospitals and prisons. Knowing that Elizabeth already worked collecting clothes for the poor and visiting the sick, Grellet persuaded her to visit Newgate prison.

This prison was founded in 1188, but had recently been re-built in a style deliberately chosen to make the very appearance of the prison a deterrent to crime. The style was known as architecture terrible and had been promoted by the French architect Jacques-François Blondel. Besides a deliberately heavy, foreboding façade the building had such features as carved chains over the doorways. Inside the prison conditions exceeded the promise of the exterior. Elizabeth was especially concerned by the conditions of the female prisoners, who lived and cooked within their cells, sleeping on straw. Children lived inside the prison with their mothers. She returned the next day with food and clothing, but family issues kept her from further visits for the next four years.

When she returned in 1816 she started a school for the children, encouraged the women to sew, preached and encouraged Bible reading and by becoming a friend with the prisoners helped them improve their own conditions. She founded the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, which is generally considered to be the first nation-wide female organization in Britain. With the influence of a brother-in-law who was an MP she was able to give evidence in 1818 to a House of Commons committee on prison conditions, which was the first time a woman had given evidence in Parliament. She invited her wealthy friends and even members of the aristocracy to visit the prisons and stay overnight, so as to publicize the issues and gain support for her cause.

After finding the body of a young boy frozen to death during a severe winter she established a night shelter for the homeless. She also established a system of Visiting Societies, with the first one in Brighton, where volunteers went to the homes of the poor and helped them as they could.

In 1818 she toured England, visiting other prisons and establishing more Ladies’ Societies for their reform. She wrote a book called Observations of the Siting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners, which suggested specific practical changes, rather than simply arguing against the existing conditions. Anyway, as Fry herself said, the conditions she saw were so appalling that she could only paint a faint picture of reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, …….. and the abandoned wickedness, …….. are really indescribable.

Elizabeth’s husband went bankrupt in 1828 – it is not recorded if he went to Debtor’s Prison – and her brother Joseph John Gurney became both an active participant in her work and her source of finance. The Prime Minister Robert Peel took an interest and passed the Goals Act of 1823 and other legislation intended to reform the prisons. However the absence of an inspection system made these early reforms ineffective.

She visited Queen Victoria several times and the Queen took an interest in her work and made financial donations. In 1842 she established a school to train nurses and it was from this school that Florence Nightingale took nurses to her hospital in Turkey, during the Crimean War. In 1842 the King of Prussia came to meet her at Newgate Prison while he was in England on a state visit.

Elizabeth died suddenly on the 12th of October, 1845. After her death the Lord Mayor of London started a campaign and helped raise private funding to establish the Elizabeth Fry Refuge for Women, which opened in 1849 in Hackney. It was a place for recently released female prisoners to live while they re-established their lives.

Her Legacy

Although John Howard had worked for prison reform earlier than Elizabeth Fry, she was the first woman to do so and once of the first women to work for the improvement of society. Although at the time she was sometimes criticized for neglecting her family, she showed that women could raise a family and also be involved in the wider world.

Her legacy can be seen in the relatively humane conditions found in most prisons today in Britain, Europe and North America. There are Elizabeth Fry societies still active in Canada.

The Elizabeth Fry Refuge evolved and changed premises, and is now the Elizabeth Fry Probation Hostel in Reading.

Sites to Visit

Her grave is in the former Society of Friends Burial Ground, Whiting Avenue, Barking, Essex.

There are English Heritage blue plaques with her name at:

her birthplace of Gurney Court, 31 Magdalen Street, Norwich

her childhood home of Earlham Hall, now part of the University of East Anglia

Mildred’s Court, London, where she first lived after her marriage

Arklow House, Ramsgate, her final home and where she died

Her name is on the Reformers Monument in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

There is a bust in the gatehouse of HM Prison, Wormwood Scrubs.

There is a statue of Elizabeth at the Old Bailey, a courthouse in central London, near Covent Garden.

She is shown reading to prisoners in Newgate on the British £5 note though in 2016, she will be replaced by Winston Churchill.

Further Research

There is archival material related to Elizabeth Fry held at the National Archives in England.

There are several biographies of her life, including:

The Value of Kindness: The Story of Elizabeth Fry, by Spencer Johnson, (1976)

Elizabeth Fry – a Biography, by June Rose (1980)

Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry, by Katherine Fry (her eldest daughter) (1848, reprinted 1974)