Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) 12 October.
Elizabeth Fry's two main philanthropic projects are still high on the social agenda today: prisons and homelessness. She was born in Earlham, a daughter of John Gurney, one of the Quaker banking family of Norfolk. Her normal girlish social activities were ended through the influence of an American evangelist, and she took to visiting the poor and sick in Norwich. At the age of twenty, she married Joseph Fry, who seems to have been a dull stick, and raised a large family, and in 1815 she recognised her vocation and became a minister in the Society of Friends.

Fry's interest in prisons dated from the age of fifteen, but it was in 1813 that she learned of the plight of women in Newgate prison and her life's work as a prison reformer began. The women's conditions were horrifying and their behaviour frightening, but Fry was fearless and her eloquent preaching had as much effect as the provision of better food and facilities, which she soon started to organise. Her interest spread from Newgate to other prisons, to the treatment of women convicts left stranded in Australia, and to foreign prisons. She travelled across the continent, consorting with kings and czars, always learning and teaching about prison reform.

Fry's other charitable work was with the homeless, at first in London and later also in Brighton. Her husband went bankrupt in 1828, so that she was no longer able to provide financial help for her work, but she continued to preach, write, and campaign to the end. She died in Ramsgate, and is buried in the Quaker burial ground at Barking.

Charles Plouviez