ain the condition of the prisons. They found
much that was inhuman; insane persons in prison, eighteen months in
dungeons! Debtors confined night and day in dark, filthy cells, and
never leaving them; men chained to the walls of their cells, or to
rings in the floor, or with their limbs stretched apart till they
fainted in agony; women with chains on hands, and feet, and body,
while they slept on bundles of straw. On their return a book was
published, which did much to arouse England.

Mrs. Fry was not yet forty, but her work was known round the world.
The authorities of Russia, at the desire of the Empress, wrote Mrs.
Fry as to the best plans for the St. Petersburg lunatic asylum and
treatment of the inmates, and her suggestions were carried out to the
letter.

Letters came from Amsterdam, Denmark, Paris, and elsewhere, asking
counsel. The correspondence became so great that two of her daughters
were obliged to attend to it.

Again she travelled all over England, forming "Ladies' Prison
Associations," which should not only look after the inmates of
prisons, but aid them to obtain work when they were discharged, or "so
provide for them that stealing should not seem a necessity."

About this time, 1828, one of the houses in which her husband was
a partner failed, "which involved Elizabeth Fry and her family in a
train of sorrows and perplexities which tinged the remaining years of
her life."

They sold the house at Plashet, and moved again to Mildred Court, now
the home of one of their sons. Her wealthy brothers and her children
soon re-established the parents in comfort.

She now became deeply interested in the five hundred Coast-Guard
stations in the United Kingdom, where the men and their families led
a lonely life. Partly by private contributions and partly through
the aid of government, she obtained enough money to buy more than
twenty-five thousand volumes for libraries at these stations. The
letters of gratitude were a sufficient reward for the hard work. She
also obtained small libraries for all the packets that sailed from
Falmouth.

In 1837, with some friends, she visited Paris, making a detailed
examination of its prisons. Guizot entertained her, the Duchess de
Broglie, M. de Pressense, and others paid her much attention. The
King and Queen sent for her, and had an earnest talk. At Nismes, where
there were twelve hundred prisoners, she visited the cells, and
when five armed soldiers wished to protect