We may be tempted to think of gratefulness as merely a contented attitude, but it can also take the form of restlessness. When we refuse to ignore a nagging sensation that something is missing in our lives, we demonstrate gratitude for the wealth of potential within us. This potential awakened in Elizabeth Fry when she witnessed the severe deprivation suffered by the inmates of Newgate Prison and opened her heart to respond. — Patricia Carlson

Elizabeth Fry was raised in a prosperous Quaker family, the Gurneys of Norwich, England. Her family represented the more "lax" end of the Quaker spectrum; thus, the children were allowed to sing and dance and wear bright clothes to Meeting. As Elizabeth grew up, however, she was increasingly attracted to the more austere devotional habits of the "Plain Quakers." When she was seventeen an encounter with a Quaker abolitionist from the United States stimulated her desire to pursue a path of godly service. Afterward she wrote in her journal, "I wish the state of enthusiasm I am now in may last, for today I have felt there is a God. I have been devotional, and my mind has been led away from the follies that it is mostly wrapt up in."

AWithin two years she was married to Joseph Fry, and her life was subsequently absorbed in the responsibilities of a growing family. Ultimately, she bore eleven children over a period of twenty-one years. This life was not without its rewards. But after twelve years of marriage, she felt that she was missing out on her true vocation. In her diary, she wrote, "I fear that my life is slipping away to little purpose."

It was soon afterward that she accepted the invitation of another Quaker to visit the infamous Newgate prison. There she witnessed conditions which filled her with shame and indignation. Women and their young children were crowded into fetid cells, "tried and untried, misdemeanants and felons" together, "in rags and dirt…sleeping without bedding on the floor." In one cell she saw two women strip the clothing off a dead baby to dress another infant.

This was the beginning of a cause, public and private, that Fry pursued for the rest of her life. She began by returning to the prison with clean clothing and straw for the women to lie on. Although the jailers tried to obstruct her efforts, claiming that the women were incorrigible savages, Fry was determined to respond to them in a manner befitting their humanity. When she asked them whether they would like her to provide instruction to their children, they responded eagerly, with many of the illiterate women pressing in to benefit from her lessons.

With the support of a committee of other Quaker women Fry launched a campaign for general prison reform. This achieved many results, including provisions for larger living quarters, better food, fresh air, and the supply of sewing materials to provide the women with some occupation and a means of earning money. Over the years Fry was tireless in her efforts, which eventually extended throughout England and Scotland. There we some who criticized her on the grounds that her devotion to this cause entailed the neglect of her family. She too upbraided herself at times. As she wrote in her journal in 1817,

My mind too much tossed by a variety of interests and duties - husband, children, household, accounts, Meetings, the church, near relationships, Friends, and Newgate - most of these things press a good deal upon me. I hope I am not undertaking too much, but it is a little like being in the whirlwind and in the storm.

Her efforts also elicited public opposition from those who felt that to humanize the prisons was to undermine their deterrent value, thus "removing the dread of punishment from the criminal classes." But Fry was motivated by the conviction that prisoners, regardless of their crimes, were human beings who bore within them the spark of the divine image. It was sacrilege to treat them with no more than punitive cruelty. Fry continued to live in the whirlwind and pressed on with her cause, in season and out, until the end of her life on October 12, 1845.