Hands off Elizabeth Fry and her hard-earned place in history
Woman of the people ... Elizabeth Fry. Two hundred years ago
this month, Elizabeth Fry entered Newgate jail, known at the
time as London's ''prototype of hell'' where a number of
prisoners were held before transportation to Australia. Although
her image appears on the £5 note, I had never heard of Fry until
I studied Australia's convict women. Dubbed ''the Angel of the
Prisons'', Fry helped orphans and other ''disposable'' citizens.
She set up a schoolroom for children imprisoned with their
mothers awaiting transportation to Van Diemen's Land. She dared
to break convention by viewing Newgate's chattel as human beings
and fanned the hope of a new life once they had served their
sentences and were freed in a foreign land. Fry was the first
woman to testify before Parliament, a persuasive abolitionist
and humanitarian lobbyist before world leaders, a pioneer in
forging new roles for women. She is more relevant today than
ever. Yet, in an effort to go '