It is said by some authorities that in her childhood Mrs. Fry expressed so great a desire to visit a prison that her father at last took her to see one.  Early in 1813 she first visited Newgate, with the view of ministering to the necessities of the felons; and for all practical purposes of charity this was really her initial step.  The following entry in her journal relates to a visit paid in February of that year.  “Yesterday we were some hours with the poor female felons, attending to their outward necessities; we had been twice previously.  Before we went away dear Anna Buxton uttered a few words of supplication, and, very unexpectedly to myself, I did also.  I heard weeping, and I thought they appeared much tendered (i.e. softened); a very solemn quiet was observed; it was a striking scene, the poor people on their knees around us in their deplorable condition.”  This reference makes no mention of what was really the truth, that some members of the Society of Friends, who had visited Newgate in January, had so represented the condition of the prisoners to Mrs. Fry that she determined to set out in this new path.  “In prison, and ye visited me.”  Little did she dream on what a distinguished career of philanthropy she was entering.

And Newgate needed some apostle of mercy to reduce the sum of human misery found there, to something like endurable proportions.  We are told that at that date all the female prisoners were confined in what was afterwards known as the “untried side” of the jail, while the larger portion of the quadrangle was utilized as a state-prison.  The women’s division consisted of two wards and two cells, containing a superficial area of about one hundred and ninety yards.  Into these apartments, at the time of Mrs. Fry’s visit, above three hundred women were crammed, innocent and guilty, tried and untried, misdemeanants, and those who were soon to pay the penalty of their crimes upon the gallows.  Besides all these were to be found numerous children, the offspring of the wretched women, learning vice and defilement from the very cradle.  The penal laws were so sanguinary that at the commencement of this century about three hundred crimes were punishable with death.  Some of these offences were very trivial, such as robbing hen-roosts, writing threatening letters, and stealing property from the person to the amount of five shillings.  There was always a good crop for the gallows:  hanging went merrily on, from assize town to assize town, until one wonders whether the people were not gallows-hardened.  One old man and his son performed the duties of warders in this filthy, abominable hole of “justice.”  And the ragged, wretched crew bemoaned their wretchedness in vain, for no helping hand was held out to succor.  They were “destitute of sufficient clothing, for which there was no provision; in rags and dirt, without bedding, they slept on the floor, the boards of which were in part raised to supply a sort of pillow.