Elizabeth Fry

Elizabeth Fry is lauded as an early 19th century prison reformer. But she had no formal background or training in prison or social work.

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  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

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  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh, here's another from the list. Yeah. But I'm not clear how it got on the list, when it got on the list, what prompted me to go, yeah, let's talk about her. But here we are.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  And an interesting and worthy entry, although I feel like my examination of her is a little bit different in terms of like where I spend time than maybe some other biographies. But we can talk about that on Friday. Elizabeth Fry is lauded as an early 19th century prison reformer. She was definitely that, despite the fact that she had no formal background in prison or social work or training to go with that. But her life story also, to me, offers a really interesting exploration of how a person finds their calling and how much they may struggle intellectually and emotionally getting there.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  So I'm focusing a little more on that. I also want to mention her name a little bit, because this wasn't something I purposely did but found myself doing, just so you understand. We will talk about the fact that Elizabeth Fry went by the name Betsy. And I found myself inadvertently referring to her as Betsy as I was laying this out. Anytime we're kind of dealing with her, in her relationships with her childhood or family, even as an adult, and then when she starts doing sort of more professional things, although you kind of have to air quote that a little bit, I started calling her Elizabeth.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  So just FYI. Either of those, I think, is accurate, although Elizabeth, as Tracy is about to tell you, was her birth name. Yeah. Elizabeth Gurney was born on May 21, 1780, in Norfolk, England. Her parents were John and Catherine Gurney. And Elizabeth, who, as Holly just said, went by Betsy, was their third daughter. After her, the Gurneys had some more kids. The total was 11 other children in addition to Elizabeth. She was kind of in the middle-ish of them. Her father was a banker and owned a wool factory, which he had inherited. And for a while, the family lived in Norwich, but they spent their summers at a country home in Bramerton, which is about four miles away.

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  The family moved to Earlham Hall outside of Norwich when Elizabeth was nine to accommodate this growing family. The Gurneys were well off, and they had a wide range of domestic help, including private tutors to teach the children writing, French, and drawing. And although her family was a loving one, and she adored her mother, Betsy's childhood wasn't exactly easy. Because as a child, she was kind of shy, she was somewhat withdrawn, she worried a great deal, and later described having anxiety about bad things happening to her family members. I read one thing about how she would constantly wake up in the night convinced that her mother

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  was dead and run to check on her. And she stayed anxious. We'll just give you a little spoiler alert on that one. She was also afraid of the dark. She was afraid of being submerged in water. So like when her siblings were all excited to go like play in the lake and go swimming, she was scared to do it. She was afraid of even mildly scary things and stories, like when her mother would read her Bible stories to go to bed at night, she would often become much more frightened than the average child. And she just was really sensitive, so she's described as crying a whole lot of the time. She was so anxious, in fact, that she had trouble concentrating when it came to the lessons her mother and the tutors gave them.

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  And her siblings would actually tease her about this. It seems like it was a very teasing household, and they would call her stupid, and that made her feel even more anxious. The Gurneys were Quakers, but they straddled the line between the Quaker world and the society circles of Norwich. And they weren't as strict in their religious dealings as other Quakers in the area were. Still, the Quaker ideals were important to them. And Elizabeth saw her mother and grandmother care for the poor of the community as a routine part of their daily life. And then when Betsy was just 13, all of her anxious fears kind of came true when her mother died after a three-week illness.

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  And that was, of course, a huge blow. But Catherine and Betsy had been especially close. Her mother had once referred to Betsy in a letter to a relative as "my dove-like Betsy." And on the other side of that relationship, Betsy had always felt like her mother was the one person who was patient and understanding with her and her anxiety. And she felt completely untethered and alone after the loss, even in the midst of their big family. She wrote in her journal about being what she called "in a valley," and that seems to have been how she described being in a depression. In the years that followed, Betsy found herself separating from her religion in a number of ways.

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  While she believed in the social ideals of Quakerism, she started to spend time with Unitarian friends. She wasn't the only member of her family to be drawn to other religions. Other members of the family found themselves aligned with Anglicanism. John Gurney had not raised his children as strict Quakers, and because they had contact with a lot of people from different denominations through social events, Betsy's siblings had done really as much exploring as she did. But more important than where she stood on religion in Norwich society was that she was still the daughter of a family of means. And even though she was a shy and anxious girl, she certainly did have suitors.

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  She was briefly engaged to a man named James Lloyd, who broke that engagement off and broke her heart in the process, although it is unknown why exactly he did so. That whole relationship and how it ended is a little unclear. But after it ended, her depression was bad enough that she became physically ill, and her father actually sent her to see a special doctor in London. A 1981 biography about Elizabeth Fry, written by June Rose, says of her during this time, quote, "On the rare occasions when she felt inclined, Betsy could be quite as carefree and charming as the others. And despite the family's pity for her, she seemed to attract the opposite sex."

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  She apparently had other proposals in her late teen years, although she was also trying to work out her identity for herself, and she didn't seem to take them especially seriously. During the year that Betsy turned 17, Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester in Edinburgh, was staying in Norwich, and the family had various occasions to entertain him, which was a big deal and was apparently quite thrilling for all the siblings. Betsy vacillated between being excited about this, feeling guilty about being excited by it, and then kind of spiraling into a morose reflection on waste and the pain of socializing. Now, after the first time she met the prince, she wrote in her diary, quote, "I met the prince.

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  It showed me the folly of the world. My mind is very flat after this storm of pleasure." She was clearly really at odds with herself and she started to describe feeling as though her talents would be, quote, "devoured by moth and rust if nothing more important than all this revelry happened during the prince's residence in Norwich." It did, in the form of another visitor, and that was William Savory, a Quaker from the US, who gave a sermon at their local monthly meeting in February of 1798. Betsy went to see him speak again the next day after she first encountered him and she

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  wrote in her journal, quote, "I have had a faint light spread over my mind. At least, I believe it is something of that kind owing to having been much with and heard much excellence from one who appears to me a true Christian. It has caused me to feel a little religion. My imagination has been worked upon and I fear all that I felt will go off. I fear it now, though at first I was frightened that a plain Quaker should have made so deep an impression on me. But how truly prejudiced in me to think that because good came from a Quaker, I should be led away by enthusiasm and folly. But I hope I am now free from such

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  fears. I wish the state of enthusiasm I am in may last, for today I have felt that there is a God. I have been devotional and my mind has been led away from the follies that it is mostly wrapped up in." Savory's anti-war sermon had reconnected Betsy with her Quaker religion after several years of drifting away from it. We also have an account of Betsy seeing Savory speak as written by her sister, Richenda, which reads, quote, "Betsy was generally rather restless at meeting, and on this day I remember her very smart boots were a great amusement to me. They were purple, laced with scarlet. At last William Savory began to preach. His voice and manner were

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  arresting and we all liked the sound. Her attention became fixed. At last I saw her begin to weep and she became a good deal, agitated." Incidentally, Savory mentioned in his account of the day that some of the families at the meeting in Norwich seemed too steeped in grandeur, which might have actually been a reference to Betsy's fabulous purple boots. They had been seated on the front row. Yeah, a number of biographers have been like, "Betsy showed up and showed out," and he may have just been like, "This is too much for me."

• 12:55Speaker 03

  But they did become friends. Betsy may have also feared that she would drift away from this newfound fervor, but her journal entries seemed to only become more intense in feeling. She wrote several days later, quote, "May I never forget the impression William Savory has made on my mind. As much as I can say is, I thank God for having sent at least a glimmering of light through him into my heart, which I hope with care and keeping it from the many draughts and winds of this life, may not be blown out, but become a large brilliant flame that will direct me to that haven where will be joy without a sorrow and all will be comfort. I have faith. How much to gain, not all the treasures in

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  this world can equal that heavenly treasure. May I grow more and more virtuous, follow the path I should go in, and not fear to acknowledge the God whom I worship. I will try and I do hope to do what is right." Just a few weeks later, Betsy was in London with her father and they went to a theater performance in Drury Lane, which she hated. She wrote, quote, "I own I enter into the gay world reluctantly. I do not like plays. I think them so artificial that they are to me not interesting and all seem so very far from pure virtue and nature. My hair was dressed and I felt like a monkey. London is not the place for heartfelt pleasure,

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  so I must not expect to find it." But William Savory was also in London at that time and she made sure to see him give sermons on several occasions while in the city. The sudden intense devotion to religion on Betsy's part caused some strain and some concern in the family. Joseph Gurney and Betsy's siblings, of course, noticed a huge change in her and Betsy herself expressed concern in her diary that she didn't know how to live the life she felt called to without hurting her family. Coming up, we are going to talk about the ways that Betsy sought to live a life true to the Quaker religion. But first, we are going to pause for a sponsor break.

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  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter,

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  From the time of Betsy's encounter with Thomas Savory and feeling suddenly religious, Betsy lived her life in a state of devotion to Quakerism, even going so far as to just adopt the practice of referring to others as thou in thee, instead of ever using the word you and wearing a dark bonnet and often a hood. This was amidst a family where no one else was doing the same thing. So she definitely stood out. But in addition to these sort of surface behaviors, she also started doing a lot of work in her community to help others. She worked on feeding and clothing the poor, and she started a Bible program for children. When one of the men who worked at Earlham was seriously ill, she sat with

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  him every day and read to him. He did not survive that illness, and she was with him almost to the end of his life. She also found a kinship in a cousin named Priscilla Gurney, who had also dedicated her life to that of a plain Quaker, so much so that Priscilla had left home to live in the Quaker colony at Colebrookdale. Visiting that Quaker colony, Betsy found a fresh bout of inspiration. And as she became more and more engaged in plain Quaker ways, her family sometimes made fun of her, continuing that theme of teasing. And then a new visitor arrived at Earlham in 1798 to visit Betsy's brother, John.

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  That was Joseph Fry. The following year, he visited again, but this time it was clear that he was more interested in seeing Betsy than seeing her brother. Joseph proposed, and Betsy told him that she needed six days to give him an answer. This was a case where neither family was wild about this match. Joseph came from a wealthy family that made their money importing tea, but they were very strict Quakers, and in the estimation of the Gurneys, not very worldly. Betsy told him no, but she also felt as though she would never meet such a good match for her and anyone else. When Joseph wrote to Betsy's father and asked to visit in December of 1799, Betsy asked her father to please let

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  him come, although she was still a little unsure about marriage for herself. And she kind of continued to be wishy washy about it, noting that she was embarrassed by Joseph's clumsiness when they were out together, but she also missed him when he was gone. At one point, she wrote that she liked him as a friend, but disliked him as a love interest, but also that she thought they were soon going to be together. There's also this moment in the midst of this where her dad actually writes to him and says, like, stop coming. She's not treating you right. Like, she's dragging you along, and that's not fair to you either. So Betsy was obviously kind of a dramatic teen, that's for sure.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  And at one point, when the two of them were out walking together when he was visiting, she shared her uncertainty with Joseph Fry, and he told her that if she wanted to be engaged to him, but then at any point felt that she couldn't go through with the marriage, even if it was the day before they were supposed to get married, that that would be okay, and he understood. And she wrote that after this, quote, "He kissed me, which agitated me so much, I went upstairs and cried." Soon thereafter, she started writing in her journal that she loved him. Though she continued to have moments of doubt, the two of them got married on August 19, 1800. They were married at a Quaker meeting, and Betsy described the day this

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  way, quote, "I awoke in a sort of terror at the prospect before me, but soon gained quietness and something of cheerfulness. After dressing, we set off for meeting. I was altogether comfortable. The meeting was crowded. I felt serious and looking in measure to the only sure place for support. It was to me a truly solemn time. I felt every word, and not only felt, but in my manner of speaking, expressed how I felt. Joseph also spoke well. Most solemn it truly was." Joseph's work was in London, and so that is where the couple lived, which kind of tickled me after she said she could not find much happiness there. Settling into

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  that new life in the city did have challenges for Betsy, although some of those challenges are a little surprising. They had more to do with Joseph's family's perception of her than any of the issues she was having leaving Norwich, although she did miss home. The Fry family had been part of the Society of Friends since its founding in the 17th century. And although they lived in a big city, as we said earlier, the Fry's kept quite strictly to the Quaker way of life. They lived simply and intentionally. On the other hand, Betsy had been raised in Norwich, far from the city, but her father had not lived that way, and he had enjoyed a way of life that his wealth and social standing afforded him. Betsy

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  had grown up going to lavish parties and entertaining princes, and to the Fry family, the perception was, as she wrote in her journal, quote, "My manners had too much of the courtier in them." They thought she was kind of too fancy, maybe a little too frivolous in the way she socialized. This had to have felt a little bit like whiplash to Betsy, since at home, she was being teased for being so strict in her Quakerism. She expected that marrying Joseph was going to put her into a family that was more closely aligned with her beliefs. Reading Elizabeth Fry's journal entries from throughout her life, but especially her early marriage, offers a view of a person who's in a constant state of self-awareness.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  This period sounds both anxious and offers a glimpse of a person settling into their life and finding its comforts. She wrote things like, quote, "We dined at the Barclays today. I felt it pleasant being at Clapham, although the change of society I have is at times a trial. It requires much strength to be on one's guard." Elsewhere, she wrote, quote, "I awoke in a burdened state of mind. I thought it better to relieve it to my dear husband and found comfort in doing so. He warned me against imagination. I must try to trust in the Lord, and I hope to find safety. I felt quite in a state of agitation

• 27:14Speaker 03

  till we went to meeting. It made me feel almost ill in body, both last night and this morning. However, my mind was sweetly calmed in the meeting, and I felt vastly relieved from my terrors and a little love and trusting in the heavenly master."

• 27:32Speaker 03

  She also mentioned really enjoying the quiet of times when it was just her and Joseph in the house together. And as many newlyweds, Betsy and Joseph discovered a number of matters of conflict in their marriage. Joseph wanted his new bride to be more direct in her social dealings, and Betsy wanted her husband to be a little bit more diligent and dedicated to his business. And the family continued to add stress. Tracy just mentioned that she really found, you know, sort of a pleasure and a comfort in the quiet times when she and Joseph got to be just at home alone together, but it didn't happen very often because the home that Betsy and Joseph lived in was part of the family business. So it was

• 28:15Speaker 03

  used as a sort of common space. They kind of treated it like communal property and people came and went whenever they wished. And Betsy was expected to host any Quakers of prominence who visited London. And that had been the Frye family practice for decades. So she kind of had to be ready to just offer up a bed to anybody who came into town. And all of this actually led Betsy to a period where she described feeling disconnected from the religious passion that had been a factor in choosing to marry Joseph Frye. She was involved in the daily happenings of a devout Quaker family, but she didn't find it to be the spiritual experience that she hoped for. She described the first

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  year of her marriage as feeling muddled and uncomfortable as she tried to fit in and find her place. And then to add to the many things that she was learning to live with, she suspected she was pregnant soon after they moved to London, and she was. This was the start of a family life that would ultimately include 11 children spread out over 22 years. After her first child, a daughter named Catherine was born on August 22, 1801, she wrote in her journal, quote, "I did not experience that joy some women describe." Elizabeth Frye has been described as a hypochondriac in a lot of accounts of her life, and that

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  anxiety over health matters was also a part of her motherhood. She was constantly afraid for the health of her children, just from the very beginning. Her journal entries during this time also start to take a really rather negative tone. She seems to find fault with everything around her. Biographer June Rose put it this way, quote, "In her early twenties, Betsy Frye's personality was at its least attractive. She was ill at ease with herself, frustrated in her religious aspirations, unable to use her powerful intelligence for the social work in which she was to excel." And Betsy was also pregnant again, not long after the first child arrived, and she wasn't

• 30:21Speaker 03

  very happy about it. She loved her children, but she also wrote, very frankly, that women had a much harder path in life than men because of the expectations of having and rearing children in addition to all of the daily things they were expected to do. She also very much seems to have been prone to what today would likely be recognized as postpartum depression, as she often described feeling constant nervousness, physical exhaustion, and a sense of being, quote, "overcome and undone." We'll talk about the ways that Elizabeth Frye found peace and fulfillment after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

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  I love this on plane flights.

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  Oh, man. Well, Matt, you know, I like to take a night walk, and YouTube Premium is perfect for this because of the background play. So I can pull up a documentary about the neighborhood I'm walking around in, put the phone in my pocket, and still hear everything perfectly.

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  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter,

• 33:11Speaker 03

  and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented, too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself. This

• 34:11Speaker 04

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• 36:47Speaker 03

  Elizabeth Fry did find some peace and purpose in outreach to the poor, doing charitable work in London, similar to that which she had done in Norwich. Her home at Mildred's Court eventually became a place where the city's poor would stop in for help, requesting things like clothing, or food, or a little money to get them through. Then, after becoming known for this work, she was given an opportunity to serve as a visitor to the Friends School and Workhouse in Islington. She would visit the children there and bring them snacks for tea time, and share Bible verses with them, and pray with them. And she found all of this really fulfilling. It seemed that getting out of her own head and focusing on helping others was a huge

• 37:32Speaker 03

  boost to her well-being. Elizabeth started doing so much work in the community, led entirely by her desire to do good in service to the ideals of the Society of Friends, that it garnered her a lot of attention. That's attention she insisted she didn't want. She started and ran a soup kitchen. She continued to give people clothing, and money, and food. And she tried to help anyone who asked, although she definitely had some opinions about who actually qualified as needy. Talk about that more on Friday. The other thing that was significant in this time is that Elizabeth had found her voice. She had described being afraid to speak in any kind of strong tone, or about anything

• 38:16Speaker 03

  but friendly acquiescence with people. But in advocating for people who were less fortunate than herself, she was able to muster both courage and strength while speaking. She was often moved to speak at regular Quaker meetings, and eventually, this led to her being recognized with the title of minister by the Society of Friends in March of 1811. One of the causes that Fry dedicated herself to, and which is perhaps her best-known work, was the struggle of women in the prison system. In 1813, Fry was encouraged by Stephen Grellit to visit Newgate Prison. He was a friend of the family. And what she saw was, of course, very eye-opening to a woman who had been raised and privileged.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Up to this point, it was standard procedure for women to all be incarcerated together. And that meant people who committed violent crimes were in the same huge, open area as people who had been brought in for petty crimes. Sometimes, women were also kept in the same room as men. A lot of women in prison were single mothers. They had no one to leave their children with, so the kids were also in prison with them. Some of the women and children were barely clothed. Additionally, there were women who had not gone through the legal process. They were awaiting trial but were being held alongside people who had been convicted and were serving sentences.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Obviously, this whole scenario is fraught with problems, from basics like hygiene to more serious issues of safety. Additionally, male jailers were put in supervisory positions over the women being held. So there's an obvious power imbalance there and some danger. But there was also inequity in all of this for those guards, because they did not make a regular salary. They were paid fees by the imprisoned women as their income. Also men, but in this case, she was dealing mostly with women. If someone had extra cash, they might be able to bribe a jailer for preferential treatment or even early release. But if they had no money, that meant that the jailers did not get paid, and their situation

• 40:28Speaker 03

  got really rough. In some cases, people stayed in prison well past the terms of their sentence, because they just couldn't afford the jailers' fees that they needed to pay to be released. Elizabeth Fry saw ways she thought she could help, and she built on reform work that was already underway for the general prison system to focus on women. Initially, this started simply with reading the Bible to the women of Newgate. But several years after her first visit, she really launched a campaign for reform. It started with a school for the children who were at the prison with their mothers. And she also worked on creating a thorough assessment of the cases of the various women in the prison.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  So there was a count of who was serving time for what crimes, who was just there awaiting trial, et cetera, as a way to advocate for classification and separation of groups based on the situation they were in and the severity of their offenses. She also wanted to initiate a variety of programs to rehabilitate women and enable them to provide for themselves when their sentences were finished. Some of these women were destined for Australia via the ships that transported people to penal colonies as part of a colonization project. We have talked about that on the show before. And Elizabeth Fry wanted to ensure that anyone who left Newgate had enough life skills

• 41:50Speaker 03

  to increase their chance of survival on trips like that, and also, hopefully, would give them a chance at a better life once they arrived in Australia. To formalize all of this work and expand it, she reached out to other Quakers who were interested in reform. And she formed the Ladies' Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners at Newgate in 1817. Fry got a boost through family in this enterprise. In 1807, her sister Hannah had married a man named Thomas Fowl Buxton. Buxton was a brewer, but in 1818, he ran for and was elected to Parliament. He had been an Anglican all his life, but had become interested in the causes that

• 42:32Speaker 03

  the Quaker community supported through his marriage into the Gurney family. And he was willing to take Elizabeth's concerns about incarcerated women before Parliament. He published a book titled "An Inquiry: Whether Crime and Misery Are Produced or Prevented by Our Present System of Prison Discipline" in 1818, that was part of that effort. And that did bring attention to a lot of the issues we have mentioned. She wrote during this time, quote, "It is now more than three years since we first began our operations in Newgate, and how encouraging it is that the experience of every year should increase our hopes and diminish our fears as to the beneficial result of these exertions.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Indeed, it is wonderful to observe the effects of kindness and care upon some of these forlorn creatures, how it tenders their hearts and makes them susceptible of oppression. I am of opinion, from what I have observed, that there are hardly any amongst them so hard, but that they may be subdued by kindness, gentleness, and love, so as very materially to alter their general conduct. Some of the worst prisoners have, after liberation, done great credit to the care taken of them." Also, in 1818, Elizabeth Fry was brought before a House of Commons Committee on Prison Conditions to speak on these issues. By this point, she was considered to have a good deal of expertise on the matter, because

• 43:59Speaker 03

  she had been making regular visits to Newgate for several years. But her Quaker beliefs on these matters proved to be problematic. Fry was adamant that the death penalty should be abolished, which got a lot of members of Parliament pretty riled up. The argument made against her position was that without the threat of judicial homicide, there was not a strong enough deterrent against serious crimes. But this was also a time when even pretty minor offenses could result in a death penalty, although there was a movement to reform legal codes, which was underway. Some of the detractors of Fry's ideas sought to discredit them by pointing out that she

• 44:41Speaker 03

  was not an expert in matters of the law, and she was essentially a tourist in the spaces that she wanted to reform. Fry traveled throughout Europe, starting in 1818, touring prisons and documenting what she saw in them. And she used these detailed notes to write up reports about each one, which included recommendations for improvements. A lot of the time, she had actually been invited, because once she appeared before the House of Commons, people started to want to hear what this reformer had to say. These recommendations, which were not only for incarcerated women, but for facilities that housed men as well, were generally very similar to the ones that she had made for Newgate. She advocated that women and men should be incarcerated separately, with violent offenders

• 45:26Speaker 03

  and misdemeanor offenders also kept separately, and that women should serve as supervisors and jailers of other women instead of male guards. She also continued to recommend ideas intended to reduce recidivism and make the time that people spent serving sentences productive, rather than letting them simply sit in their cells. So one of the things she suggested uniformly was education.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  This included religious studies, but also nonreligious instruction and training for useful employment once their time in prison was over. Because Frye had become something of a public figure in 1821, the association that she founded to help Newgate's incarcerated women population had evolved to have a broader base of supporters and the potential for greater impact. And it was decided at that point that it would be better served by a name that reflected this wider scope. So at that point, it became the British Ladies Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners. In 1822, Sir Robert Peel became Home Secretary in Parliament, and he was much more open to the reforms that Elizabeth Frye

• 46:38Speaker 03

  had been campaigning for than his predecessor had been. Due in part to her influence, in 1823, the Jails Act was passed, which stated, quote, prisons should be made secure, jailers should be paid, female prisoners should be kept separately from male prisoners, doctors and chaplains should visit prisons, and lastly, attempts should be made to reform prisoners. This was a first step, and Elizabeth Frye and the other members of her reform society continued to champion the cause of prison reform. In the 1830s, there was still a great deal of debate about the management of incarcerated populations. So even though a decade of reform advocacy had been going on,

• 47:22Speaker 03

  they were still arguing about it in Parliament. In October 1835, the House of Lords appointed two men to inspect the prisons of London. Those were philanthropist and juvenile criminal reformist, William Crawford, and the Chaplain of Milbank Penitentiary, Rev. Whitworth Russell. And their first report was about Newgate exclusively because they realized it had plenty of things that they needed to discuss. Their findings were actually pretty similar to all the things that Frye had found when she first visited Newgate. Additionally, their report specifically spoke about the work of Elizabeth Frye. And these two inspectors commended her efforts, and they acknowledged that they had improved the hygiene of the prison, they had beneficially occupied

• 48:07Speaker 03

  people with things to do, and it had had a positive impact in other ways. But there's always a big caveat. The issue that they had with her was that some of the women's programs and lectures and training sessions happened at times that caused them to miss chapel services. The implication here was that the work of a Quaker woman was interfering with the workings of the Anglican Church in the prison systems, and that was a problem. That aspect of the report damaged Frye's standing with the public to a degree, but she was still respected in many circles, including very powerful ones. By the time Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837,

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Elizabeth Frye was well known for her reform work, so much so that the young Queen met with her on a number of occasions to speak about her work. Frye toured Europe, giving talks about prison reform, and was welcomed by heads of state and asked to give reports and counsel by them. This also garnered her a good deal of criticism from some Quakers who worried that her fame was not in line with the religion she claimed. Yeah, she was always very adamant, like, I don't want credit. I don't want to be lauded for this. But like, at the same time, she was being very vocal, and there was kind of no way to not be famous. So she was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place in that regard.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  The 1840s saw a great deal of family tragedy for Elizabeth Frye and a slowing down for her as well. Her beloved son, William, an adult at that point, who had doted on her and had taken care of her in many instances, died along with his daughter of scarlet fever. The family had been afraid to even tell Elizabeth because they thought she might die of shock or grief immediately. But she did endure the news, although she also lost four more family members in a very short period of time after this, including her supporter in Parliament, Thomas Fowle Buxton. In September of 1845, she wrote to one of her sons,

• 50:15Speaker 03

  quote, "I deeply feel that from long and continued illness, I can be very little to your dearest father in his latter days. And I feel it most important that his sons should be his helpers and comforters. I think that you cannot expect that you will very long have a mother to come to." Elizabeth Gurney Frye died a few weeks later, on October 12, 1845, in Ramsgate, Kent, after a stroke. Although there was no funeral ceremony in keeping with Quaker tradition to eschew such things, an estimated 1,000 people showed up to watch silently as Elizabeth was interred in the Quaker Cemetery at Barking in East London.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  And that's Elizabeth Frye. Yeah. This is very fascinating. Do you have some listener mail? I do. I can't wait till Friday because I have so many thoughts about Elizabeth Frye. Yeah. But in the meantime, I have listener mail from our listener, Ren, who's writing about Beulah Henry, and writes, "Hi there, Holly and Tracy. I just listened to your podcast about Beulah Louise Henry and the flagpole invention idea. I believe it is a simpler design than described. It may look something like this. The pole is lowered into a surrounding hole, preventing contact with the ground. This would give it more clearance as it moves around being lowered. For safety reasons, I assume you would need a cover for the hole when it is not being lowered. Maybe a six-year-old would have thought of that. This is just a thought. Please enjoy my silly little drawing on the sticky note.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  I spend my days inventing lab equipment. What I have found is that the simplest ideas prove to be the most effective. Your show brings so much joy to my life. I have listened to you for years, and often the podcast accompanies me while I do my work. Thank you for all of your dedication to craft. Keep up the good work." Okay, one, I think you're a cool person because if you're inventing lab equipment, that is neat. I don't think this is what Beulah had in mind, though. Yeah. I kept going back and looking at the exact quote, and I don't think it quite lines up because it says, "There should be a hole right through that pole so the flag could drop through and never touch the ground." So the hole is through the pole, not the pole going into a hole. And as I say this, I feel like I'm writing

• 52:29Speaker 03

  the silliest children's book ever. The pole and the hole. But this solution of Ren's is quite ingenious, I will say. It just drops the whole flag and its pole underground until it is re-raised the next time, which is genius. Someone somewhere sent us a video of,

• 52:48Speaker 03

  like, a patio umbrella, and the patio umbrella, instead of folding down and then you tie it up on the outside, it sort of folded inside out and dropped down into the pole that holds it up. And that, to me, is more of a hole through the pole because the whole pole was hollow. See, when you keep saying whole pole, you do sound like you're writing a children's book. It is a little weird. Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Oh, Beulah, I'm gonna get in my time machine and be like, I'm gonna waste every other opportunity to go, girl, what did you made? We're all really trying to suss this out. We're very confused about the hole through the pole. I like it, though, because it's making us all think creatively, which is always a benefit to our minds to do that.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  And also, you know, just who knows what someone will invent as a consequence. I'm just delighted that someone who invents things actually had the desire to weigh in on this. So thank you so much, Ren. If you would like to write to us and share your thoughts on maybe how this pole hole situation works, or on Elizabeth Frye and her very emo self, which, again, we're going to talk about a lot on Friday, or anything else that comes to mind, you are invited to do so at [email protected]. If you would like to look at the show notes and the sources that we use to put together shows, you can do that at missedinhistory.com. Each episode has show notes that will show you

• 54:16Speaker 03

  all the things we looked at and read, or in some cases skimmed, and that is easy to access. If you would like to subscribe to the show and you haven't done that yet, that is also easy to do. You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs and quick hellos

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