the whole assembly, and subdued the feelings of the prisoners, many of whom were but two well acquainted with the faces of the magistrates, who were themselves touched and astonished at being thus introduced to a state of decorum so new within these walls, and could not help acknowledging how admirably this mode of treatment was adapted to overcome the evil spirit which had so long triumphed there.  The usual silence ensued after the reading, then the women withdrew.  We could not help feeling particularly glad that the gentlemen were present at the reading.  The prisoners crowded around the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to beg little favors.  We had a long conference with these gentlemen relative to this prison and its object, and to the wisest regulations for prison discipline, and the causes of crime.  Indeed, we could not have received more kind and devoted attention to what was suggested.  Elizabeth Fry’s manner seemed to awaken new trains of reflection, and to place the individual value of these poor creatures before them in a fresh point of view.  The Sheriffs came to our committee-room.  They ordered a cell to be given up to the Committee for the temporary confinement of delinquents; it was to be made to appear as formidable as possible, and we hope never to require it.

The soldiers who guarded Newgate were, at our own request, dismissed.  They overlooked the women’s wards, and rendered them very disorderly....  I found poor Woodman lying-in in the common ward, where she had been suddenly taken ill; herself and little girl were each doing very well.  She was awaiting her execution at the end of the month.  What can be said of such sights as these?...  I read to Woodman, who is not in the state of mind we could wish for her; indeed, so unnatural is her situation that one can hardly tell how, or in what manner, to meet her case.  She seems afraid to love her baby, and the very health which is being restored to her produces irritation of mind.

This last entry furnishes, incidentally, proof of the barbarity of the laws of Christian England at that time.  Human life was of no account compared with the robbery of a few shillings, or the cutting down of a tree.  This matter of capital punishment, in its turn, attracted the attention of the Quaker community, together with other philanthropic individuals, and the statute book was in time freed from many of the sanguinary enactments which had, prior to that period, disgraced it.

By this time notoriety began to attend Mrs. Fry’s labors, and she was complimented and stared at according to the world’s most approved fashion.  The newspapers noticed her work; the people at Court talked about it; and London citizens began to realize that in this quiet Quakeress there dwelt a power for good.  Given an unusual method of doing good, noticed by the high in place and power, together with praise or criticism by the papers, and, like Lord Byron, the worker wakes some morning to find himself or herself