The children were almost naked, and ill from want of food, air, and exercise.  Mrs. Fry told them that she would start a school for their children, which announcement was received with tears of joy.  She asked that they select one from their own number for a governess.  Mary Conner was chosen, a girl who had been put in prison for stealing a watch.  So changed did the girl become under this new responsibility, that she was never known to infringe a rule of the prison.  After fifteen months she was released, but died soon after of consumption.

When the school was opened for all under twenty-five, “the railing was crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situations, with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation.”

Mrs. Fry saw at once the need of these women being occupied, but the idea that these people could be induced to work was laughed at, as visionary, by the officials.  They said the work would be destroyed or stolen at once.  But the good woman did not rest till an association of twelve persons was formed for the “Improvement of the Female Prisoners of Newgate”; “to provide for the clothing, the instruction, and the employment of the women; to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; and to form in them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety, and industry, which may render them docile and peaceable whilst in prison, and respectable when they leave it.”

It was decided that Botany Bay could be supplied with stockings, and indeed with all the articles needed by convicts, through the work of these women.  A room was at once made ready, and matrons were appointed.  A portion of the earnings was to be given the women for themselves and their children.  In ten months they made twenty thousand articles of wearing apparel, and knit from sixty to one hundred pairs of stockings every month.  The Bible was read to them twice each day.  They received marks for good behavior, and were as pleased as children with the small prizes given them.

One of the girls who received a prize of clothing came to Mrs. Fry, and “hoped she would excuse her for being so forward, but if she might say it, she felt exceedingly disappointed; she little thought of having clothing given to her, but she had hoped I would have given her a Bible, that she might read the Scriptures herself.”

No woman was ever punished under Mrs. Fry’s management.  They said, “it would be more terrible to be brought up before her than before the judge.”  When she told them she hoped they would not play cards, five packs were at once brought to her and burned.

The place was now so orderly and quiet, that “Newgate had become almost a show; the statesman and the noble, the city functionary and the foreign traveller, the high-bred gentlewoman, the clergyman and the dissenting minister, flocked to witness the extraordinary change,” and to listen to Mrs. Fry’s beautiful Bible readings.