reading aloud to about
sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needle-work. They all rose
on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then resumed their seats and
employment. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I
observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a
sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered
position in which they are placed. I afterwards visited the other wards,
which were the counterparts of the first."

In 1818 there was a House of Commons Committee, before which Mrs. Fry
gave evidence. Her statement is so remarkable as to be worth recovering
out of a long-forgotten Blue Book. In answer to questions, she told the
Committee that "There are rules, which occasionally, but very seldom,
are broken; order has been very generally observed. I think I may say we
have full power amongst them, for one of them said it was more terrible
to be brought up before me than before the judge, though I used nothing
but kindness. I have never punished a woman during the whole time, or
even proposed a punishment to them.

"With regard to our work, they have made nearly twenty thousand articles
of wearing apparel, the generality of which, being supplied by the
shops, pays very little. Excepting three out of this number of articles
that were missing (which we really do not think owing to the women), we
never lost a single thing. They knit from about 60 to 100 pairs of
stockings and socks every month, and they spin a little. The earnings of
their work, we think, average about eighteen-pence per week for each
person. This is usually spent in assisting them to live, and helping to
clothe them.

"Another very important point is the excellent effect we have found to
result from religious education; we constantly read the Scriptures to
them twice a day; many of them are taught, and some of them have been
enabled to read a little themselves. It has had an astonishing effect. I
never saw the Scriptures received in the same way, and to many of them
they have been entirely new, both the great system of religion and of
morality contained in them."

XI.

OTHER BENEFICENT WORKS.

The work so successfully accomplished in Newgate was the precursor of
similar work undertaken in other prisons, not in London only, but all
over the country. With prisons now so much better managed, and with
multitudes of workers, single or associated, striving for the welfare of
prisoner