t of death tended
neither to the security of the people, the reformation of any prisoner,
nor the diminution of crime. Felons who suffered death for light
offenses looked upon themselves as martyrs--martyrs to a cruel law--and
believed that they had but to meet death with fortitude to secure a
blissful hereafter. This fearful opiate carried many through the
terrible ordeal outwardly calm and resigned.

Among the condemned ones was Harriet Skelton, a woman who had been
detected passing forged Bank of England notes. She was described as
prepossessing, "open, confiding, expressing strong feelings on her
countenance, but neither hardened in depravity nor capable of cunning."
Her behavior in prison was exceptionally good; so good, indeed, that
some of the depraved inmates of Newgate supposed her to have been
condemned to death because of her fitness for death. She had evidently
been more sinned against than sinning; the man whom she lived with, and
who was ardently loved by her, had used her as his instrument for
passing these false notes. Thus she had been lured to destruction.

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