After the adoption of the rules, a visitor to the prison would scarcely have recognised the place or the people.  A matron, partly paid by the Corporation and partly by the associated ladies, had the women, now first divided into classes, under her superintendence.  A yards-woman acted as porter.  The prisoners, who formerly spent their time wholly in idleness or in card-playing, were now busily at work.  A visitor, who went to see the change of which he had heard, describes his being “ushered to the door of a ward, where at the head of a long table sat a lady belonging to the Society of Friends.  She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work.  They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and employment.  Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they are placed.  I afterwards visited the other wards, which were the counterparts of the first.”

In 1818 there was a House of Commons Committee, before which Mrs. Fry gave evidence.  Her statement is so remarkable as to be worth recovering out of a long-forgotten Blue Book.  In answer to questions, she told the Committee that “There are rules, which occasionally, but very seldom, are broken; order has been very generally observed.  I think I may say we have full power amongst them, for one of them said it was more terrible to be brought up before me than before the judge, though I used nothing but kindness.  I have never punished a woman during the whole time, or even proposed a punishment to them.

“With regard to our work, they have made nearly twenty thousand articles of wearing apparel, the generality of which, being supplied by the shops, pays very little.  Excepting three out of this number of articles that were missing (which we really do not think owing to the women), we never lost a single thing.  They knit from about 60 to 100 pairs of stockings and socks every month, and they spin a little.  The earnings of their work, we think, average about eighteen-pence per week for each person.  This is usually spent in assisting them to live, and helping to clothe them.

“Another very important point is the excellent effect we have found to result from religious education; we constantly read the Scriptures to them twice a day; many of them are taught, and some of them have been enabled to read a little themselves.  It has had an astonishing effect.  I never saw the Scriptures received in the same way, and to many of them they have been entirely new, both the great system of religion and of morality contained in them.”

XI.

Other beneficent works.