ELIZABETH FRY
www.icenimagazine.co.uk
ISSUE 87 2020
Women Of Norfolk Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) Born Elizabeth Gurney on May 21st 1780 in Norwich, Norfolk, to banker and merchant, John Gurney (1749-1809) and his wife Catherine Bell (1754-1792), who was a member of the Barclay family who founded the Barclays Bank. The Gurney family was a prominent and influential Quaker family that established the Gurney Bank, which would later be annexed into Barclays Bank in 1896. At a young age, in 1792, Elizabeth’s mother died and as the oldest child she took on responsibilities of caring for and educating her younger, surviving, siblings: Hannah Gurney (1783-1872), Louisa Gurney (1784-1836), Samuel Gurney (1786-1856), Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847) and Daniel Gurney (17911880). John and Catherine had a total of thirteen children. However, seven of them unfortunately died prematurely. In 1798, William Savery (1750-1804), an American Quaker, preacher and abolitionist visited Norwich to give a speech at a Quaker meeting of worship, during his tour of Europe, on the subject of working with the poor and sick. This deepened Elizabeth’s Quaker beliefs and had a heavy influence on her later career of radical prison reform. When she was 20 years old, in 1800, Elizabeth met fellow Quaker, banker and merchant, who mostly dealt in
the tea industry, Joseph Fry (1777-1861) and on August 19th of that year they married at the Quaker Meeting House on Goats Lane in Norwich, but soon relocated to London as that was where Joseph’s business was located. During their marriage, Elizabeth bore Joseph a total of eleven children, all whom survived; five sons and six daughters. Whilst in London, Elizabeth continued caring for the poor, which resulted in her being acknowledged as a minister of the Society of Friends in 1811 and saw her travel to Scotland, Ireland, northern England and some parts of Europe. It wasn’t until 1813, that her career in prison and social reform took flight, when she visited Newgate Prison, in London, on the behest of Stephen Grellet (1773-1855), a family friend and French-born Quaker missionary. The conditions of the prison horrified her; the women’s section of the prison was over-crowded, supervised by all male guards, with women and their children and in some instances, mixed cells of men and women. She also discovered that several of the prisoners had not received a trial, did their own cooking, washing and slept on straw that had been scattered onto the cell floors. The next day, Elizabeth returned with clothing and food to share out between some of the prisoners. PAGE
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