The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [43]
“Why, the queen is talking to Mrs. Fry,” whispered astonished guests across the room.20 Being on the queen’s guest list was in itself quite a social coup for even a well-connected commoner like Elizabeth. Being addressed by royalty was an honor of stunning proportions. A mounting murmur erupted into a thunderous clapping, acknowledging Her Majesty’s salute to the plain-clothed Mrs. Fry. Like any devout Quaker, Elizabeth bowed only to the King of Kings. Her faith prevented her from following expected protocol of genuflection before the queen. To worship a mere mortal would have been, in her eyes, heresy. Elizabeth’s young daughter observed this first meeting as a study in contrasts: “The Queen, who is so short, courtesying [sic], and our mother, who is so tall, not courtesying, was very awkward.”21
As the pageantry unfolded, Elizabeth could think of nothing but the plight of Harriet Skelton, executed at Newgate prison that very day. She had begged Lord Sidmouth to seek a pardon for the poor girl, whose husband had persuaded her to pass a forged banknote. Elizabeth’s urgency to express outrage grew louder each time a life was extinguished for a minor crime. Searching for answers about how she might have saved Harriet Skelton, Elizabeth surmised that perhaps she had annoyed Lord Sidmouth by calling upon influential friends to lobby her cause. The Duke of Gloucester, a former dance partner now married to the daughter of King George III, had spoken to Lord Sidmouth personally on her behalf. The paranoid Sidmouth refused to budge, fearing that the end of capital punishment would lead to the sort of uprisings that had sparked the French Revolution. Elizabeth berated herself for exerting too much political pressure, writing in her diary: “In the efforts made to save her life, I too incautiously spoke of some in power.”22
A realist, Mrs. Fry quickly recognized that philanthropic work came at a price. As her list of charities grew, Elizabeth became increasingly dependent on other people’s money and power for support, especially with the collapse of the Fry bank. In moments of uneasy self-reflection, she focused on her own contradictions, worrying how her popularity might impede her hands-on social work. When newspapers began to write about her, she blamed the conflict on herself: “I have felt of late, fears, whether my being made so much of, so much respect paid me by the people in power in the city, and also being so publicly brought forward, may not prove a temptation, and lead to something of self-exaltation, or worldly pride.”23
Pulled from her musings back to her regal surroundings in Mansion House, Mrs. Fry heard the heralds as Queen Charlotte bid her leave. Later that night, reflecting on her introduction to the queen, Elizabeth felt unimpressed. In her diary, she wrote: “I think I may say, this hardly raised me at all, I was so very low from what had occurred before, and indeed in so remarkably flat a state, even nervous.”24
On this day in 1818, Elizabeth Gurney Fry could not know that her good work had thrown her unwittingly into the gears of the empire’s grand plan for social engineering. It was a scheme birthed by greed and nurtured on corruption. Because so many of the Newgate women were bound for transport, Mrs. Fry and her Quaker friends began to regularly visit the convict ships that anchored on the docks along Woolwich by Bony off the Butt for weeks at a time.25 A simple act of kindness became Elizabeth’s legacy. She made it her mission to save the souls of the female cargo bound for Van Diemen’s Land. As fate would have it, in giving them hope, Mrs. Fry freed them.
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Sweet Sixteen
Enterprising Women
In about AD 47, the Romans settled the town Londinium and surrounded it with a defensive wall. Built on one of the six original gates of this