Stepping into Something Frightening

There are all sorts of things that get in the way of doing what we feel we’re called to do. Sometimes it’s sloth; sometimes we simply get distracted. But a lot of times, it’s fear that stands in the way. And a lot of times, the only way to conquer fear is, as the commercial goes, just do it.

In the early 1800s, English prisons were pits of indecency and brutality. In the women’s division at Newgate Prison in London, for example, women awaiting trial for stealing apples were crammed into the same cell as women who had been convicted of murder or forgery (which was also a capital crime).

Eating, sleeping, and defecating were all performed in the same confined area. Women begged or stole to get clothes, alcohol, and food. Many became despondent in such conditions and sat around in a drunken stupor stark naked. Some even starved to death.

In short, it was not the place for a lady, especially a seemingly delicate woman like Elizabeth Fry.

Fry was the daughter of an English banker, and she married young (age twenty) into another wealthy family. Children came quickly, one on top of another, to eventually number eleven in all. She spent her days mothering and entertaining people of high society. Yet years before, she had sensed a call to work on behalf of the downtrodden. So while a young bride and mother, she had given medicine and clothes to the homeless and helped establish a school for nurses. And at age thirty-three, she found the courage to step inside London’s Newgate Prison and began visiting female prisoners. Friends and prison officials warned her of both the disease and violence she exposed herself to. But she waved the warnings aside and kept visiting.

But visiting soon wasn’t enough. She taught female prisoners basic hygiene, as well as sewing and quilting. She read the Bible to inmates and intervened for women on death row.

To nineteenth-century observers, her efforts produced a miracle: many of the reportedly wild and shifty inmates became, under her care, orderly, disciplined, and devout. Mayors and sheriffs from the surrounding regions (and later other European countries) visited Newgate and began initiating reforms in their own jails and prisons.

Elizabeth Fry today is remembered as a pioneer in prison reform. And yet the only thing that separated her from many others of her day was her willingness to step into a frightening environment to see what she could do.

(Mark Galli, Christian History Magazine)