42. Elizabeth Fry: Quilting fixes everything, even prisons!

Who was Elizabeth Fry?

This episode dives into the life and legacy of Elizabeth Fry, a pioneering Quaker who transformed prison conditions in the 19th century. The narrative begins with Elizabeth's discovery of horrendous prison conditions at Newgate Prison. She implemented groundbreaking reforms, including appointing female officers for women prisoners, introducing craft activities, and providing basic education. Her influence extended beyond prisons, affecting hospital nursing standards and contributing to the abolition of transportation and slavery. Elizabeth's work earned her historical acclaim and recognition, including her appearance on the British five-pound note. The episode encapsulates her tireless efforts to promote kindness, dignity, and rehabilitation over punishment in various societal institutions.

Other episodes mentioned: 36. Betsi Cadwaladr and 8. Nellie Bly

00:00 Discovering the Power of Chatbots
02:23 Introducing Elizabeth Fry: The Angel of Prisons
03:23 The Quaker Influence and Early Life of Elizabeth Fry
10:37 Elizabeth Fry's Marriage and the Catalyst for Change
11:56 Transforming Newgate Prison: Elizabeth Fry's Mission
21:27 Elizabeth Fry's Secret Mission
22:24 Convincing the Authorities
23:48 Expanding the Reform Movement
24:43 Royal Support and International Influence
27:29 Personal Struggles and Continued Advocacy
30:12 Prison Reforms and Transportation to Australia
39:58 Legacy and Lasting Impact

Sources
https://averilopperman.co.uk/2015/09/24/elizabeth-fry-as-a-
child/#:~:text=Earlham%20Hall%2C%20Elizabeth%20Fry's%20childhood,Quakerism
%2C%20'Apology'%5D.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Quaker
https://www.quaker.org.uk/faith/our-faith
https://www.elizabethfry.co.uk/who-was-elizabeth-fry/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rd45dlnnjo
https://www.quaker-tapestry.co.uk/2022/03/08/elizabeth-fry-and-the-patchwork-quilts/
EBSCO, "Elizabeth Fry | Research Starters"
EFRY Peel-Halton, "History"
Historic UK, "Elizabeth Fry"
MyLearning, "Who was Elizabeth Fry and Why is She an Important Figure? • Prison
and Penal Reform in the 1800s"
Wikipedia, "Elizabeth Fry"

Transcript

audio1427465471: 0:08

I learned today at work that you can make a chat bot. So, you can use copilot to make a chat bot on specific guidance. So we have this bucket or team site full of chalk block of guidance, and people have been moaning that they can't find anything. Nobody's putting it in my eyes until today, until chatbot little man, I guess he's a man, he's coming. And um, I was like playing about with it. I was like, training him. I'll tell you what this gonna. That is amazing and it's gonna be a game changer for parenting because all the things that your kids are like, where, how do I do the laundry? Ask. Ask the chatbot. I've told you, you ask the little, it's in there, body boy. Oh my god. Um, so that was nice. That was.'cause also the first two hours of me trying to do that were completely futile. And I was like a bit grumpy and then I went break. Did you need a chat chatbot to tell you how to use? Well, no. If anything he was confusing me even more the, the, the, the AI chat. And then I went and brought the laundry in and then I came down, sat down, and then I found it turns out the chat bot would only work in the teams app. It wouldn't work in the SharePoint app. And I was trying to do it from the SharePoint app. Oh. And they couldn't handle it. But then when I came back after my break, I went in the teams app and clicked co-pilot and it just boom. And I was on, you just needed that. Come on, come on. Needed a reset. Needed a two minute fresh air sunshine. So yeah, that's been my afternoon. And I've been looking forward to our chat'cause I've got a really good story for you. You've caught, you've caught me by surprise with who it is. Have I?'cause you, yeah. You like hinted it might be one lady and then we took a diversion and now it's somebody else. So I'm like, oh, who did I hint? Who's this? Who did I hint? You hinted. Oh, I don't wanna do any spoilers'cause you might still be working on it. Bass. Oh, I didn't even look at that one. Isn't that funny? I've got such long list of like, and I just cherry pick them like, yeah, I didn't even look at that one. I think that's the way you just follow your bliss and you end up with these, I know what's going on today and just feeling it. Elizabeth Fry, which is very exciting. Um. Would you like to get into it? Yeah, let's go G. Little intro. Of course. So in 1813, the stench of Newgate prison was the smell of Britain's darkest despair, a human pit where women and children were locked in Riotous, filth awaiting transportation or the gallows. The hopelessness and despair seemed as though it would never end until one day into this, hell stepped a Quaker instead of recoiling and running to her wealthy mansion. Elizabeth Fry didn't flinch. Instead she introduced kindness. And patchwork quilts to a world that only knew punishment and in the process changed the future of prisons, nursing and women's rights forever. This is the story of the Angel of Prisons, Elizabeth Fre. Wow. Incredible. And I really would not have expected handicrafts to come into it, so this is fascinating. Andy kras said the linchpin of this story, so you you hold onto that, onto craft. I'm excited. Yeah. So, uh, loads of sources. Loads of sources today, and particularly quaker.org. Quaker is gonna be a huge feature of what we talk about. Elizabeth fry.co. Do UK uh, Quaker Tapestry. There you go. Getting in early with the, with the tap, getting in early with the craft. Historic uk. There's others that we'll put in the show notes as well, so. Let's set the scene a little bit. Uh, we're very English today. We meet the daughter of a wealthy Quaker banker. So we are thinking wealthy, we are thinking prominent. There's gonna be a few name drops throughout this story, which just shows you the level of wealth we're talking about. Um, the first name is Barkley, as in. Barkley card as in the bank for global superpower. Okay. Yeah. So her mother came from the Barkley family. Ooh. Yeah. So high society, really successful. We very high. Yeah. We could quite easily rest on our laurels and just play croquet and yes, that's true. And also quite happy childhood, I imagine.'cause it's easier when you are. Wealthy. So her parents were the, were a love match, which is quite rare I think, in some of our stories. It was a very happy household growing up. But most importantly they were a Quaker family. Do you know what Quaker means is I know that it is a religious, persuasion, but. Beyond, beyond what I've seen in Fleabag and what little I know from kind of Quaker societies in neighborhoods I've lived in, uh, let's say. No, I know basically nothing. Um, well, you know enough, I think so. A c it is basically a Christian offset, so a Christian group. Um, it was found in England in the 1650s, and it's all about direct personal experience of God for everyone and. Because of that, it's very individualized. So they often have lots of silent worship, and it's all about serenity and peace. It's very slow living, I would say. And they work on five values. They have five pillars of their religion. One is equality. Peace, integrity, also known as truth, simplicity and community. Oh, this sounds delightful. I, right. And then it gets better. They don't use traditional religious structures or paid ministers. They have a shared responsibility throughout the community because everyone has a valuable contribution to make. Nice. Maybe we are Quakers on the inside and we just didn't know, oh yeah, if you could leave God out of it, I'm in. Like, um, and it's still very prominent. Their website was really, interesting about how they work today. They don't have like traditional on this day, you do this or you have to worship here. It's very much just whatever fits for your community, like that's how you gather. So it all looks very. Different today it's quite diverse in how they run. But I think in the way it ran in England previously was a little bit more structured. The story today actually is in 1780. So, um, kind of the time we were talking about Mary Anning kind of that time. Okay. so Mary Anning was south. We are going East, east England today in Norridge and Norridge was. Dominated in this in the 17 hundreds by the textile industry. They were known for high quality Shaws and it also had a growing bank sector. It had like its mini metro policy of banks because, it was so far away from London. So you could set up like another ongoing kind of society there. Both of those things are gonna come up quite a lot. We've already mentioned banking and we'll mention crafts going forward. But what comes with big factories in olden I'm thinking pollution and I'm thinking, yeah. Child labor. Um, absolutely lots of children in factories, um, and quite. Scary to me. Yeah. I always dangerous, felt quite scared when we learned about it as kids. Yeah. So that is just the flip side,, of the wealthy society that I've pictured. And then actually, you know, as with life, when there's rich people, there's poor people. You might not just see them. So Elizabeth was born in magdalene Street in Norwich where she lived until she was five and she had 10 siblings in to Wow. So lots of people. Her father was a guy called John Gurney. He moved his family a few Mars out of Norwich into a very kind of ty kind of place called Earlham. It was an estate and it was actually, it didn't belong to them, it was entailed to the Bacon family, but. And they had such a long lease, the gurneys on this estate that loads of generations of family have lived there. And because it was so big, basically we're thinking big, almost. Um. Rolling rounds, you know, meandered around a river like Downton Abbey type fight. Very, very Downton Abbey. Today it's actually part of the law school there, so East LERs Law School. So it's still there today. But very, very picturesque there. Beautiful. So Elizabeth's there having a lovely time. Her mother sadly dies when she's 12. And that is the. Like the biggest mark on Elizabeth's childhood. It was a really big loss, obviously, and she didn't handle it necessarily as well as the others. So she had night terror. She used to creep into her parents' room, and check, her mother was still breathing when she was poorly'cause she was so scared of losing her. So sad. And yeah, it was a real, big anxiety driver for Elizabeth. So when the mother died, her eldest as happens in history all the time. The eldest daughter then becomes mother basically. So they kind of close ranks. They pick up the pieces, they just try and, move on with their life. Elizabeth was already quite shaky before her mother died anyway. And she was also described as a delicate child, quite a sickly child anyway, so she also had, neuralgia so that confined her to her bed. So I think there was just a lot of anxiety around sickness in general. Her brothers were allowed to go to school. The girls were, and they were homeschooled, you'd think within a big family she'd, you'd be quite ballsy, wouldn't you? Like you kind of have to fight at the table. Yeah. To be heard, that kind of thing. But actually that led Elizabeth even further into like a timid nature. Someone who struggled with anxiety, quite isolated. She was just, you know, and there's nothing wrong with this. It's not, it is just one of those things, isn't it? Some people are quieter and that's okay. So that kind of sums up her childhood, you know, very blissful, but a slight blemish here or there. Things get interesting when she marries. So normally it's when they die, but now she's married the man. Um, she marries Joseph Fry in 1800 and this is Joseph Fry from the chocolate company. Oh, okay. I'm a fan of his work. Yeah. Um, so Fry's. Is fries qua? Do you have it? It's English. I don't think so. I think it's very English. Yeah. It's now owned by Cadburys. People might know Cadburys for sure, which are then owned by somebody else. But anyway, so she married a chocolate man. Wonderful. And moved to London. In London. She meets up with her Quaker buddies'cause obviously it's a religion. You can, it's a very easy way to tap into a society. And, she makes friends. One of those friends is a guy called Steven Relet. It's him who actually, when talking to Elizabeth one day, encourages her to visit a local prison. This on top of Quaker beliefs of believing that all people are equal, trying to, do good deeds with your life. Some, you know, all integrity, truth, all those things we were talking about earlier. This kind of compels her to visit. She wants to go and see what's going on and see if she can help. Right? So this prompts her visit. It's a Newgate prison. This is the catalyst of the story. This is the moment that really defines her life trajectory, where she's going, what she achieves, what we've learned about today, all within this one visit. So Newgate Prison is in London. At the time, it is known for public execution. So it's a prison and on the outside they have executions. I dunno. People used to go and see that it was fun. Apparently some people like it. Yeah. I don't think we've actually changed that much as a species, but Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and it was Linda's most notorious jail. It had been in operations since the 12th century, and it is known as, um, the worst ever prison to, as from then to today. Like you can see YouTube channels that are calling it the worst ever prism. It was so bad that at one point they just didn't. It's one of those things like, I guess they do it with murderers houses sometimes, like where it's so dark they just knock it down. They just, it's better just to get rid. And actually today it's where the old Bailey is. Oh, okay. Which is London Central Criminal Court. You'll often see it on BBC News when there's a big case. It's very fancy inside a very fancy pants. Um, and only a small section of the prism remains. So it's mainly the old Bailey So Elizabeth goes, to this notorious, horrible, scary prism, and it's so bad that the jailer actually says, mom, I don't think you should go in there. Like, I think it's very dangerous. And um, uh, I think he calls them. I haven't written it down, which is strange. Maybe I have later. I think he calls them animals in the thing. So that's how he's describing it and he's really trying to warn it as a off off. But she insist, she says, I've told my friend Steven, I'm gonna go and do this. I'm gonna go and do this. And in there what she observes is quite harrowing. It's, women and children mixed up in the same. Places of men, first of all, crowded, filthy, no beds, no bedding,, lack of food, lack of sanitation, um, just basics are out the window. And what I would say is if you have listened to our Nelly Bly, chat, that it's very similar about,, we really go into a lot of detail there about details at the time because Nelly Bly wrote those diaries. So I'd go to that even though it's across the water, but it's similar timeframe. And what I really remember from that chat about Natalie Bly is that the bread was moldy when they did get bread. It was covered in mold and that they used to chuck water, freezing cold water on them to clean them. And, you know, so these are really disgusting conditions. What wasn't mentioned in the nearly by case was children. And here we have the presence of children, and people who are awaiting trial living in these conditions. And, a lot of them were wait, awaiting deportation. They were often drunk and violent. This is what Elizabeth was met with and if you think about from that down to Abbey Rolling Hills, that's where she's come from and this is what she's seeing. One of the most harrowing lines that I found about this was actually from a historian, Rosalyn Crone, um, who is from the Open Uni. And, she did an article for the BBC on Elizabeth Fright and she described, one of the experiences that Elizabeth had where she saw women taking clothes off a dead baby in order to give them to a living one. I know. So it's dark. We're in dark territory. Sounds like there was no hair or a sense of like being responsible for these people and their children at all. Like it was just in you go sort yourselves out. It was almost about hiding them from society, I guess. Right, right. That such a parallel to the Nellie Bli thing, like what's happening behind closed doors? Nobody's aware.'cause why would anyone ever find that out? Yeah. Oh God. It is quite, it's, it is quite gut wrenching. It's, um, quite. I haven't even spoken about the smell. Can you imagine how it would smell? Oh my God, that place was in situ being run that way since the 12 hundreds. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It doesn't bear thinking about, um, fry describes it as,, a dreadful scene of misery, riot, idleness and vice of every description. So prim lady in society, you would think that. Um, Elizabeth would dust her dress off, put her bonnet on, and walk out and carry on with her day. Probably feeling very grateful. I imagine probably feeling very, thankful, but then, oh, I don't. That's not for me, but that's not what happens at all. If anything, she continues to visit. So this became the first of many, many visits that, Elizabeth would make to Newgate Prim. where Elizabeth comes from is pure empathy. Just, just like you, Kara, just like you were showing a few minutes ago, but she wanted, to help and she, she was inspired by these women in squalor to help push for better conditions. So, just to kind of get a sense of what Elizabeth was feeling at that time, and this is a quote from her journal, if you're happy to read that for us. This has been a time of deep humiliation to me. This witnessing the effect of the consequences of sin, the poor creature murdered her baby, and how inex expressively awful now to have her life yeah. That was the description of a female prisoner who was waiting execution. So. It just shows that these, it's bleak, isn't it? It is hella bleak. That is the extreme margins. Um, and I, you know, I'm sure we all have questions about how robust courts and process of proving guilt were. Mm-hmm. So you wonder how many people were there? That's so true. Who should not have been, who were innocent, right? Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think it also kind of shines what reality was.'cause I think we look back on that time as a society and to me anyway I do of charm and like you think Oliver Twist, you think Sweeney Todd, you think all these things where we've made it into an entertaining thing. Um, but actually when you start to think about this woman sat there. Um. She killed her baby'cause she knew she was gonna die. Like what do you pull from that? Like those positive, you know? So this is what Fry is presented with, but she goes on a mission and Professor Rosalyn Crow, she explains three ways that. Elizabeth goes about this. First off, she gets women prisoners looked after by women officers. Really plain, really simple. She gets them supervised by a superintendent or a matri, and she makes sure that the women are safe. They do not have access to men unless they are chaperoned by a female. And this is, how ladies should be and be pretreated and things like that. That's kind of where she's coming from. So that's the first fundamental thing she charges for. The second is that, these prisoners don't have anything to do. They're just sat there in their thoughts, in their despair and what's the answer to that Crafts. He's like, I know what's gonna fix this. Sewing, knitting, quilting. She uses her contacts from the textile world, from her big business contacts to bring products in so that they can knit and sew and thing. But actually in the end, what the women, when she taught the women how to make these things, they were so good that they were sellable. So then she had a network of people on the outside of the prison that you could sell products to and give the earnings back to the women. So that they could, I dunno, afford a solicitor, afford something to, in order to, um, get them out of that hellhole. So she occupies their time through crafting and then she also occupies their time through reading, writing, schooling, arithmetic, all that kind of stuff. Just basic life skills. Right. And then the final thing that she wanted to do with them was, which is probably the hardest one, is convince them of religion. So convince them that if they opened up to the God, if they repented for their sins, they would turn their lives around and help create a better society outside of Prism. So she had a three-prong attack, very strategic. She knew what she was doing, and she knew better than to ask for permission. She was, she just. Did it. She didn't want to ask the authorities, she didn't wanna ask the City of London. She kind of just was like sneaking woolen, like, and see, and just visiting, I guess her view, like it had been neglected and ignored to the detriment of it, and everybody who was involved with it. So, you know, they had their chance. So why should she? Um, so she kind of does this in secret, you know, she kind of gets this going under the radar. She brings, a band of ladies, quote unquote together called the Ladies New Gate Association because she has., On the outside a network of Quaker people who are living by her values. So very easy to convince that this is the right way to go. Because, you've got that affiliation. And then she actually started bringing people into mental specific women prisoners. So to really build those relationships, which is just so, oh my God, admirable. It's amazing. Then once it's going well, when she's like, actually this is a success and things have got calmer. The, um, and she had, I guess, evidence, didn't she, that the behavior has changed that, these people, aren't. Causing a raw'cause. They're not dangerous. You know, they're sat here knitting for heaven's sake. It's gonna be, it's a different vibe, isn't it? So when she had that first discussion with the warden right at the start, um, so in April, 1817, which I think is four years, Yeah, four years after she first visited, that's when she takes it to the authorities. That's when she's like, okay, this is enough now. That's a long, and it just shows you how secret it was, doesn't it? Like very under the rates are slowly, slowly catchy, monkey. People in the authorities traditionally may I imagine were absolutely flabbergasted the change of the women. They were known to be quiet, obedient. Sober because they had other purposes in life, right? So this is just a quote about Elizabeth reflecting on her time at Newgate and how, what she managed to do. To my surprise, we have been enabled to demonstrate how much may be done amongst these unhappy outcasts, merely by kindness, accompanied by instruction and employment. Quite right. I love not only that she had the right instincts about how to help. But that she had cunning, the nouse to sit on it until she had amounted enough evidence to irrefutably say, this has worked. It is working. Let's go. Let's do this everywhere. It's killer. Right? It is really cool. Yeah. And off the back of that, she just kept building it. So in 1821, she formed the British Society of Ladies for promoting, the Reformation of Female Prisoners, which is quite a mouthful. We could probably give her some marketing tips, but that's fine. Yeah. Could be stuck here. But she was like, Hey, this is Newgate. Newgate is the worst, but it's not the only one. Right. There's gonna be so many more prisons out there. Like you said, let's go. And she had a system in place. She was ready in 1823. The Girls Act was introduced into Parliament and it actually used some of her ideas. So that made it law to have separate areas for men and prison and women guards for women prisoners. And it's stuff like this, you could just take for granted nowadays, don't you? But actually there had to be a time where someone was like, yeah, we should really write this down. Yeah, like it seems like common sense, but. Yeah. And it just kept escalating and escalating. So she traveled widely throughout the country meeting, different heads of authorities and things like that., And she even met with Queen Victoria. And not only just met Queen Victoria, she was a big thing bearing of mind. Queen Victoria was the head of the British Empire back then. She was a very, very, very important lady. She'd convinced Queen Victoria to give her money to help with the campaign. And if you think of like. Off with her head royalty kind of reputation of monarchs back then to be giving money to people in squalor and to people who are the outcast, the bad eggs of society. Elizabeth must have done some pretty sweet talking, right? Yeah. The way she must have been persuasive. So we don't just stop there. We meet Queen Victoria, but we also meet other heads of state. So we are going wide with our prison reform. She actually writes a book which is UK based, so Scotland and North of England. But, she does do this across seas as well. In her book she writes that, she often stayed, the night in and not only her, but she would invite noble people to come and stay and see for themselves the condition of the prisons. So she's like, you have no idea. Come and have a look and see for yourself, and then you'll get one talking about, I dunno how she deserve. I can't even get people to write a report, so I dunno how she managed to get people to stay the night in prison. But, you know, she, she really did influence and, you know, come and see for yourselves. It's this kindness that helped her gain the friendship of the prisoners themselves when they, especially when they see the improvements Um, and it so happened that one of her many brother-in-laws, remember she's got 10 siblings Yeah. Happened to be an mp. So he was selected. I mean, statistically it was gonna happen. That that's just so many people, like so many people in high society. Yeah, it makes sense, doesn't it? So this is Thomas Foel Bookton and he becomes basically her beeline to Westminster. He's, he, she's got his ear. We know how persuasive she is. She gets these people to spend the night in prison, like it's fun. And, it begins promoting her work in and around his network of mps Like I said, we do go overseas. So she does go to Ireland in 1827 and visits a women there. She encouraged the people of Belfast, the women of Belfast, to organize their own committee.'cause she's like, look, this is what we did. If you set up a committee or an association, you can really get stuff done. And she managed to help not just prisons, but also poor houses. Just to cheek a reminded that she is married and she comes from a big family and she continues to have a big family and she has 11 children during this time that time. who wants that? 11. Um, too many. But then she probably. Didn't like hands-on parent them in the way that you or I would be thinking. Yes, that's true. She probably like went there. You go off, you go to nurse. A nanny each. A nanny. Yeah. If we've got Barkley money, it's a nanny Perchard, isn't it? Yeah. So, um, but this is a really interesting detail I found was the, actually her husband went bankrupt himself. In 1828. Yeah. Um, so they couldn't afford to live in fancy London anymore. They moved to West Ham up. Tim Lane not offending. We're not offending anyone. I'm just saying people in West Ham are like, what the hell man? Like I paid a lot to live here at the time. It was the outer margin. It's all contextual team. Her brother then becomes the business manager for her husband. Because of that, and he could control the bankruptcy, that meant that she could continue to do her work. She wasn't like employment or anything, heaven forbid. But it also means that I think it was a really interesting detail because it reaffirms that you can fall at any time. Like you are no different from these people in this prison. You know, if you were born in different circumstances or if you had different circumstances put upon you, you could quite easily be in that situation. And it just highlights again, the need for That's a really good point. So it's a sort of a, just a life lesson in humility. If you can go broke trying to sell chocolate. Nobody's safe. Like everyone wants that. Everyone wants chocolate. It's a need. So I've kind of whizzed through a big timeline there. We're now in like 1820s, but I just wanna, I just wanna take a little meander back, just a little loopy, loopy loop back. To 18. 18 because this was a big time, in Fry's life. Like I said, she'd got her new gate system of Pum and she was actually invited to give evidence. This is not just an opinion, this is hard fact evidence to the House of Commons in the British Parliament. And doing that, she became the first woman ever to present evidence in the house as So that's quite a court to accolade, isn't it? Yeah. And actually the word evidence really stuck out to me.'cause that means they're gonna believe what she says.'cause it's evidence. It's fact, isn't it? She's an expert. She's coming in. Yeah. Authority. Astute of them to recognize her skill and, yeah. Knowledge. Yeah. Not just, I thought it was brilliant. Yeah. Um, so, but 18, 18 is also another very key year in Elizabeth's life because it's the year where the government decide to send women convicts to Australia. This is a dark part. Um, I dunno if you ever saw the series Banished on BB, C. It's a, it was like a six part drama and it had that guy Russ Tovi, I think the guy Oh, I like him. Yeah, he's in everything. He's just brilliant. He's just been, he's in everything part of everyone's life. For so long anyway. He was in it. I loved it. It was about 10 years ago now, but I thought it was brilliant. I'd recommend digging it out on the iPlayer. It got canceled quickly, I think,'cause it was very expensive to run. But it, it follows the, what happened when the ships landed on the beaches and Australia and what happened then. Oh, see. Yeah, it's very interesting. As you can imagine taking the facts of what we've learned about Newgate and the prisons, you can probably imagine what the conditions were like, in Australia and on the way to Australia. So we've got a couple of quotes here. They're quite meaty. transportation was traumatic. The women and children were herded into flat carts, manacled, and wearing leg irons. They were then pulled through the streets to the jeers of the townspeople, pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables and sods of soil arriving at the ship, terrified and filthy. They remained in the ship's hold for the entire 17 week voyage, 17 weeks. We're on this damn ship. Isn't that insane? Comfort of a sea of a ship at that time in history was diabolical even for people who paid a fortune for luxury. Yes. That's so true. I to not see the sun or the horizon, and presumably most of these people will never have been in a boat in their lives. That is. Beyond human endurance. That is, it's disgusting, absolutely disgust. And for children to be treated that way, they've done nothing No one should face that. Oh, I feel very strongly about boats, as you know. Yeah. This is, as I do, this is really quite upsetting. Oh, um, I'm sorry. It's not the end of the boat. Oh. So, um, but don't you worry, so if Elizabeth. Reformed Newgate prison under the radar Very quickly, what do you think she does with the boats? Oh, on Elizabeth, come on. Mm-hmm. And, you know, Her staple, is crafts. They make a reappearance. Don't you worry. We're gonna craft our way out of this. Okay. So, Elizabeth arranged that women would be transported in, closed carriages un. Manacled, at night and allowed food outta the hole once the ship had sailed a mile because by the time it had been a mile, they could, it was too far to spin back, right? If they jumped, they jumped right. The boredom of the 17 week voyage would often lead to fighting and gambling. So Elizabeth was like, I know how to combat this, fighting and gamble in. I've got some crafting that you can be doing while you are on there. So here's an explanation of what Elizabeth's solution Each woman was to have a bag of useful things containing clothing, a comb and brush, soap and towels, a bible, spectacles, a plate, cutlery, material, wadding. Needles, a thimble and threads everything needed to make a patchwork quilt. During those long days at sea, over 12,000 prisoners received a bag and Elizabeth Fry visited each of their 106 ships. Yeah, she went on every ship and gave out her the cutest thing. Oh my It's amazing that like bread and roses thing of we don't just need to feed and keep these people physically safe, which obviously we do, but that is, that is necessary, but not sufficient. We also need to recognize their thinking, feeling human beings just like we are, they need something to do and. What, a babe. I love her. The detail that really got me was spectacles. Like, to me that was just so holistic. And so it was like, well, yeah, they're gonna be, they're gonna need to see what they're doing. And it was just like, um, dark in a ship's hold. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And I bet they probably never had had spectacles You know what I mean? With a life changing for people actually. Yeah. And we're not just quilting for the fun of it. Cara like quilting is fun, but it's, it's gonna help these people even more because when the ships were dock prospective employers would meet the ships for free labor. And obviously it's better to be in the labor world than it is to be homeless. And a well-made quilt would show that the convicts were industrious, clean, and willing to work quietly at a given task. So that's their cv. Oh, like behold, yeah, here's my cv, I can do this. Um, so she didn't just give them a fun project to do. She gave them self-respect. She gave them hope, she gave them a longevity. And, um, this starting of this work was actually what would lead to the, a pollination of transportation. In 1837. So not only was she was like, this is terrible, I'm gonna fix it. She's gonna root cause this as well. And actually the ships did stop sailing to America in there's a quote from Rosalyn Crow there, if you I just think it's remarkable because you see it just spreading through society. It then becomes a thing in hospitals too, that women should be taken care of by women, or that there should be some kind of female chaperone present. It's something we take for granted now when we go to the she added, True. Which is true, isn't it? And it's a beautiful segue another, door of the vestibule of what Fry got up to because in 1840 she opened a training school for nurses in guys So she was so strong on women. And those pillars again, of Quakers, we keep going back to that, of serving your community integrity and peace, and that's what she wanted to spread. So she started the Institution of Nursing Sisters a. And it was actually this program that inspired Florence Nightingale to be one of Fry's nurses, to assist people in the crime main war. Now the crime war comes up a lot in this pod. You Yes, because it's not only Florence Nightingale that was inspired by Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale meets Betsy Cara in one of our episodes. Um, who. Has her own journey and her own miraculous things going on, and it just shows how many women were changing history at this time in their own ways. Right? It's very exciting. And basically she was just developing saints after saints after saying she just made this like conveyor belt of them. And this was on top of her prison reform, her humanitarian efforts, like we explained with the ships. And, she sought to tackle a variety of social issues on top of this, she. Also improve the life of the homeless by setting up shelters in London, opening up soup kitchens. This particular endeavor was inspired when she saw the dead body of a young child who didn't survive winter that year. And she was like, okay, I can do something about this. You'll notice there's a trend throughout her or her. Endeavors that they're specifically to help women and children, but particularly those who are having a hard time with it. Just like she was at risk of when bankrupt. Elizabeth's desires for better overall conditions in different institutions also included the proposed reform of mental asylums. Again, this harks back to Nelly Bly and what she did with mental assignments. So it is very much just seeing a fire, tackling it, seeing a fire, tackling it. And because of that, she becomes so widespread, both geographically, but in also types of, challenges that people are facing and. Alongside her fellow Quakers, she does eventually start campaigning for the, abolition of slavery. She does a lot, such a natural fit, isn't it? Yeah. That you, you see the, the way that people are having to live and you think No, and it just opens your eyes, I suppose, to more and more. What's wrong and why not? Especially if you're getting successes especially if you're seeing the real, powerful work of quilting. Like, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you wanna show it to somebody else, or, you know, help in a. Helps a different marginalized society. It's wonderful. And it is, and I don't think she could have got a far, if she could, without the Quaker community, because she had that network set up ready to go, didn't she? She just tapped into it, both the Quaker community and I guess her, industry to contacts.. Let's leverage that. And that is very smart, Elizabeth passed away in 1845. More than a thousand people attended her memorial. It's insane, isn't it? And there's lots of, legacy things. To, note about her, probably the most easy reference is that she was on the British five pound note for, I can't remember how long. It was for about 15 years, something like that. I found an interesting blog about it that actually that wouldn't have sat well with her because it's everywhere and because of her, Quaker, Values, I guess. But also if we hop back to that anxious child who was isolated and quiet and timid and scared she probably didn't want that you, she, it doesn't really fit with that personality of that child we started with. Does it? I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a really interesting note in the blog anyway. Yeah. your point. Yeah. If I was her as an introvert. Now dead and able somehow to comment on it. I would like to think that I would be pleased to example that can have hope and challenge things that are really truly unacceptable and terrible and make a difference because. Her image being on that note might have inspired somebody to go find out about her and that might have inspired them to think, ah, okay, stuff can change. So hopefully her, like overall mm-hmm. Opinion of it would be positive.'cause I think it's, yeah, it is. Great. Come on Elizabeth, take the win. That was beautiful. I really hope so um, she also has a statue at the now old Bailey. Um, it is phenomenal. The statue. It is marble. It is massive. It's in the most beautiful hall that they've got. It's very green GOs in Harry Potter. It's stunning. And obviously that is the site of the new tourist, prison new gate where she began all her tireless work to, improve things. And also I think Queen, Victoria's like round the corner, wow. Yeah. Um, there's lots of blue plaques and different things around the country, both, in Norwich and, um, in London. There is the Elizabeth Fry Refuge, which it was established to provide shelter for destitute women. Particularly those were released from Prism. There's lots of institutions and buildings named after her and quite right because she was an absolutely incredible woman. Her legacy, like literally just as you said, that is like a beacon of hope All these legacies are very much a testament to all the power, the compassion, the determination, and she saw that the absolute awful conditions for women in places like that prism. And she didn't walk away. She chose to stay. She chose to fight it. She chose to fix things, and she believed in her values so strongly that it just rippled throughout her life. And she showed that people can be treated with dignity and not punishment, and that actually the rehabilitation does work and her work shouts that when you approach the world's toughest problems with kindness and practicality, you can spark monumental, lasting change, and yeah, what a powerful legacy that is. Oh, thank you so much for bringing that. What an Person what? Harming She's kick ass, right? She's kick ass. Incredible and yet serene.'cause she's Quaker and we're all about peace. And you know, serenity is, she wasn't getting agitated. She was doing, yeah, she was calm and she's like, have you tried quilting? Have you tried this as an answer to your problems? I, I love it. And, you know, score one for the introverts out there because she. Is live in proof that it does not mean that you are, you know, she was a timid child, but she certainly was not a timid adult. Mm-hmm. She met problems that most people would just go, oh no. Yeah. Uh, and she thought, okay, let's think about this. What can we do? And she must have had such a way with people as well. For sure. With the prisoners, the networking she did on the outside the trade route. She must have been such a contrary to her as as a child, such a people I think that's the thing that gets forgotten sometimes, that people who are quiet are listening. They're not necessarily speaking, they're thinking, thinking before they speak, which is a gift I don't have. But you know, she had that. To be able to persuade people to come and stay in the prison. I mean, oh my God.

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