Elizabeth Fry

Stuff You Missed in History Class

This episode explores the life and legacy of Elizabeth Fry, an influential 19th-century prison reformer. The narrative traces her journey fr

Key takeaways

• Elizabeth Fry (known as Betsy) utilized her Quaker convictions to launch significant reforms at Newgate Prison.
• Her early life was characterized by severe anxiety, fears of the dark, and the traumatic loss of her mother at age thirteen.

Main topics

• Elizabeth Fry's biography
• Quakerism and religious devotion

Notable quotes

I met the prince. It showed me the folly of the world.

Conclusion

The episode provides a moving look at how personal vulnerability and r

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Iwano. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa DiGiulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of New Shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:35) I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Speaker 7 (0:47) Ooh, I scammed him. What? I could talk to you for an hour. Speaker 4 (0:50) You're a generational yapper, like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (1:05) I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You Speaker 8 (1:21) never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Speaker 5 (1:26) And you can get access to all episodes 100 % ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. Speaker 6 (1:44) Hi, this is Kylie Brakeman, Angela Geratana, Speaker 8 (1:46) Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald, and Speaker 6 (1:48) we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists podcast, the Speaker 8 (1:52) improvised character comedy podcast, where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Speaker 7 (1:58) Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And Speaker 6 (2:01) we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He Speaker 7 (2:05) winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. Speaker 6 (2:08) I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. Speaker 7 (2:12) You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Speaker 6 (2:17) Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (2:24) Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, Black literature. I'm Jacquees Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit Podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella Bakers, Malcolm Xs, and Martin Luther Kings running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (2:57) Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Speaker 1 (3:08) Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh, here's another from the list. Yeah. But I'm not clear how it got on the list, when it got on the list, what prompted me to go, yeah, let's talk about her. But here we are. And an interesting and worthy entry, although I feel like my examination of her is a little bit different in terms of like... where I spend time than maybe some other biographies, but we can talk about that on Friday. Elizabeth Fry is lauded as an early 19th century prison reformer. She was definitely that, despite the fact that she had no formal background in prison or social work or training to go with that. But her life story also, to me, offers a really interesting exploration of how a person... finds their calling and how much they may struggle intellectually and emotionally getting there. So I'm focusing a little more on that. I also want to mention her name a little bit because this wasn't something I purposely did but found myself doing, just so you understand. We will talk about the fact that Elizabeth Fry went by the name Betsy. And I found myself inadvertently referring to her as Betsy as I was laying this out. Anytime we're kind of dealing with her, in her relationships with her childhood or family, even as an adult. And then once she starts doing sort of more professional things, although you kind of have to air quote that a little bit, I started calling her Elizabeth. So just FYI, either of those I think is accurate. Although Elizabeth, as Tracy is about to tell you, was her birth name. Speaker 2 (4:48) Elizabeth Gurney was born on May 21st, 1780 in Norfolk, England. Her parents were John and Catherine Gurney, and Elizabeth, who as Holly just said, went by Betsy, was their third daughter. After her, the Gurneys had some more kids. The total was 11 other children in addition to Elizabeth. She was kind of in the middle-ish of them. Her father was a banker and owned a wool factory, which he had inherited. And for a while... The family lived in Norwich, but they spent their summers at a country home in Bramerton, which is about four miles away. The family moved to Earlham Hall outside of Norwich when Elizabeth was nine to accommodate this growing family. The Gurneys were well off, and they had a wide range of domestic help, including private tutors to teach the children writing, French, and drawing. Speaker 1 (5:42) And although her family was a loving one and she adored her mother, Betsy's childhood wasn't exactly easy. Because as a child, she was kind of shy. She was somewhat withdrawn. She worried a great deal and later described having anxiety about bad things happening to her family members. I read one thing about how... She would constantly wake up in the night convinced that her mother was dead and run to check on her. And she stayed anxious. We'll just give you a little spoiler alert on that one. She was also afraid of the dark. She was afraid of being submerged in water. So like when her siblings were all excited to go like play in the lake and go swimming, she was scared to do it. She was afraid of even mildly scary things and stories. Like when her mother would read her. Bible stories to go to bed at night, she would often become much more frightened than the average child. And she just was really sensitive, so she's described as crying a whole lot of the time. She was so anxious, in fact, that she had trouble concentrating when it came to the lessons her mother and the tutors gave them. And her siblings would actually tease her about this. It seems like it was a very teasing household, and they would call her stupid, and that made her feel even more anxious. Speaker 2 (7:02) The Gurneys were Quakers, but they straddled the line between the Quaker world and the society circles of Norwich, and they weren't as strict in their religious dealings as other Quakers in the area were. Still, the Quaker ideals were important to them, and Elizabeth saw her mother and grandmother care for the poor of the community as a routine part of their daily life. Speaker 1 (7:27) And then when Betsy was just 13... All of her anxious fears kind of came true when her mother died after a three-week illness. And that was, of course, a huge blow. But Catherine and Betsy had been especially close. Her mother had once referred to Betsy in a letter to a relative as, my dove-like Betsy. And on the other side of that relationship, Betsy had always felt like her mother was the one person who was patient and understanding with her and her anxiety. And she felt completely untethered and alone after the loss, even in the midst of their big family. She wrote in her journal about being what she called in a valley, and that seems to have been how she described being in a depression. Speaker 2 (8:14) In the years that followed, Betsy found herself separating from her religion in a number of ways. While she believed in the social ideals of Quakerism, she started to spend time with Unitarian friends. She wasn't the only member of her family to be drawn to other religions. Other members of the family found themselves aligned with Anglicanism. John Gurney had not raised his children as strict Quakers, and because they had contact with a lot of people from different denominations through social events, Betsy's siblings had done really as much exploring as she did. Speaker 1 (8:50) But more important than where she stood on religion in Norwich society was that she was still the daughter of a Christian. of a family of means, and even though she was a shy and anxious girl, she certainly did have suitors. She was briefly engaged to a man named James Lloyd, who broke that engagement off and broke her heart in the process, although it is unknown why exactly he did so. That whole relationship and how it ended is a little unclear. But after it ended, her depression was bad enough that she became physically ill, and her father actually sent her to see a special doctor in London. Speaker 2 (9:26) A 1981 biography about Elizabeth Frye written by June Rose says of her during this time, quote, on the rare occasions when she felt inclined, Betsy could be quite as carefree and charming as the others. And despite the family's pity for her, she seemed to attract the opposite sex. She apparently had other proposals in her late teen years, although she was also trying to work out her identity for herself, and she didn't seem to take them especially seriously. During the year that Betsy turned 17, Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester in Edinburgh, was staying in Norwich, and the family had various occasions to entertain him, which was a big deal and was apparently quite thrilling for all the siblings. Betsy vacillated between being excited about this... feeling guilty about being excited by it, and then kind of spiraling into a morose reflection on waste and the pain of socializing. After the first time she met the prince, she wrote in her diary, quote, I met the prince. It showed me the folly of the world. My mind is very flat after this storm of pleasure. She was clearly really at odds with herself, and she started to describe feeling as though her talents would be, quote, devoured by moth and rust if nothing more important than all this revelry happened during the prince's residence in Norwich. Speaker 1 (10:54) It did, in the form of another visitor, and that was William Savory, a Quaker from the U.S., who gave a sermon at their local monthly meeting in February of 1798. Betsy went to see him speak again the next day after she first encountered him, and she wrote in her journal, quote, I have had a faint light spread over my mind. At least, I believe it is something of that kind, owing to having been much with and heard much excellence from one who appears to me a true Christian. It has caused me to feel a little religion. My imagination has been worked upon, and I fear all that I felt will go off. I fear it now, though at first I was frightened that a plain Quaker should have made so deep an impression on me. But how truly prejudiced in me to think that because good came from a Quaker, I should be led away by enthusiasm and folly. But I hope I am now free from such fears. I wish the state of enthusiasm I am in may last, for today I have felt that there is a God. I have been devotional and my mind has been led away from the follies that it is mostly wrapped up in. Savory's anti-war sermon had reconnected Betsy with her Quaker religion after several years of drifting away from it. Speaker 2 (12:12) We also have an account of Betsy seeing Savory speak as written by her sister, Richenda. which reads, quote, Betsy was generally rather restless at meeting, and on this day I remember her very smart boots were a great amusement to me. They were purple laced with scarlet. At last William Savory began to preach. His voice and manner were arresting, and we all liked the sound. Her attention became fixed. At last I saw her begin to weep, and she became a good deal agitated. Incidentally, Savory mentioned in his account of the day that some of the families at the meeting in Norwich seemed too steeped in grandeur, which might have actually been a reference to Betsy's fabulous purple boots. They had been seated on the front row. Speaker 1 (13:00) Yeah, a number of biographers have been like, Betsy showed up and showed out, and he may have just been like, this is too much for me. But they did become friends. Betsy may have also feared that she would drift away from this newfound fervor, but her journal entries seemed to only become more intense in feeling. She wrote several days later, quote, May I never forget the impression William Savory has made on my mind. As much as I can say is, I thank God for having sent at least a glimmering of light through him. into my heart, which I hope with care and keeping it from the many drafts and winds of this life, may not be blown out, but become a large brilliant flame that will direct me to that haven where will be joy without a sorrow and all will be comfort. I have faith. How much to gain? Not all the treasures in this world can equal that heavenly treasure. May I grow more and more virtuous. follow the path I should go in, and not fear to acknowledge the God whom I worship. I will try, and I do hope to do what is right. Speaker 2 (14:07) Just a few weeks later, Betsy was in London with her father, and they went to a theater performance in Drury Lane, which she hated. She