Read Online Queen Victoria by E. Gordon Browne - Free Book Online

inquire into the condition of the London prisons. Mrs Fry was called upon to give evidence, and she recommended several improvements,   e.g.   that prisoners should be given some useful work to do, that rewards should be given for good behaviour, and that female warders should be appointed.
    She visited other countries in order to study foreign prison systems, and her work in the prisons led her to consider what could be done to improve the condition of the unfortunate women who were transported as convicts. She succeeded in improving matters so much that female warders were provided on board ship, and proper accommodation and care on their arrival at their destination.
    Even such a tender-hearted man and friend of the poor as Thomas Hood, author of “Song of the Shirt,” misunderstood Mrs Fry’s aims, for in a poem called “A Friendly Address to Mrs Fry,” he wrote:
    No - I will be your friend - and, like a friend,
Point out your very worst defect - Nay, never
Start at that word! But I   must   ask you why
You keep your school   in   Newgate, Mrs Fry?

Your classes may increase, but I must grieve
Over your pupils at their bread and waters!
Oh, though it cost you rent - (and rooms run high) -
Keep your school   out   of Newgate, Mrs Fry!
    In the face of domestic sorrows and misfortunes, Mrs Fry persevered until the day of her death in 1845 in working for the good of others.
    The work in this direction was continued by Mary Carpenter, whose father was the headmaster of a Bristol school. She began her life’s work after a severe outbreak of cholera in Bristol in 1832. At this time there were practically no reformatory or industrial schools in the country, and Mary Carpenter set to work with some friends to found an institution near Bristol. She worked to save children - especially those whose lives were spent in the midst of sin and wickedness - from becoming criminals, and in order to bring this about she aimed at making their surroundings as homelike and cheerful as possible.
    She even helped to teach the children herself, as she found great difficulty in finding good assistants. She wished to convince the Government that her methods were right, and so persuade them to set up schools of a similar kind throughout the country.
    The great Lord Shaftesbury was her chief supporter, but it was not until the year 1854 that Mary Carpenter succeeded in her desire, when a Bill was passed establishing reformatory schools. From this time her influence rapidly increased, and it is mainly owing to her efforts that at the present day such precautions are taken to reform young criminals on the sound principle of “prevention is better than cure.”
    Mary Carpenter also visited India no fewer than four times in order to arouse public opinion there to the need for the better education of women, and at a later date she went to America, where she had many warm friends and admirers. She had, as was only natural, been keenly interested in the abolition of negro slavery.
    One of the most distinguished women in literature during the Victorian Age was Harriet Martineau. At an early age it was evident that she was gifted beyond the ordinary, and at seven years old she had read Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and learnt long portions of it by heart.
    Her health was extremely poor; she suffered as a child from imaginary terrors which she describes in her Autobiography, and she gradually became deaf. She bore this affliction with the greatest courage and cheerfulness, but misfortunes followed one another in rapid succession. Her elder brother died of consumption, her father lost large sums of money in business, and the grief and anxiety so preyed upon his mind that he died, leaving his family very badly off.
    This, and the loss later on of the little money they had left, only served to strengthen Miss Martineau’s purpose. She studied and wrote until late in the night, and after her first success in literature, when she won all three prizes