After the decision had been received from the Lords of the Council, Skelton was taken into the condemned cell to await her doom.  To this cell came numerous visitors, attracted by compassion for the poor unfortunate who tenanted it, and each one eager to obtain the commutation of the cruel sentence.  It was one thing to read of one or another being sentenced to death, but quite another to behold a woman, strong in possession of, and desire for life, fated to be swung into eternity before many days because of circulating a false note at the behest of a paramour.  Mrs. Fry needed not the many persuasions she received to induce her to put forth the most unremitting exertions on behalf of Skelton.  She obtained an audience of the Duke of Gloucester, and urged every circumstance which could be urged in extenuation of the crime, entreating for the woman’s life.  The royal duke remembered the old days at Norwich, when Elizabeth had been know in fashionable society and had figured somewhat as a belle, and he bent a willing ear to her request.  He visited Newgate, escorted by Mrs. Fry, and saw for himself the agony in that condemned cell.  Then he accompanied her to the bank directors, and applied to Lord Sidmouth personally, but all in vain.  It was not blood for blood, nor life for life, but blood for “filthy lucre;” so the poor woman was hung in obedience to the inexorable ferocity of the law and its administrators.

On this occasion Mrs. Fry was seriously distressed in mind.  She had vehemently entreated for the poor creature’s life, stating that she had had the offer of pleading guilty only to the minor count, but had foolishly rejected it in hope of obtaining a pardon.  The question at issue on this occasion was the power of the bank directors to virtually decide as to the doom of the accused ones.  Mrs. Fry made assertions and gave instances which Lord Sidmouth assumed to doubt.  Further than this, he was seriously annoyed at the noise this question of capital punishment was making in the land, and though not necessarily a cruel or blood-thirsty man, the Home Secretary shrank from meddling too much with the criminal code of England.  This misunderstanding was a source of deep pain to the philanthropist, and, accompanied by Lady Harcourt, she endeavored to remove Lord Sidmouth’s false impressions, but in vain.  While smarting under this wound, received in the interests of humanity, she had to go to the Mansion House by command of Her Majesty Queen Charlotte, to be presented.  Thus, very strangely, and against her will, she was thrust forward into the very foremost places of public observation and repute.  She recorded the matter in her journal, in her own characteristic way:—­