milies as
assistant-dressmaker, at a shilling a day. In 1819, a woman was tried
and sentenced to imprisonment in Yarmouth Gaol, for cruelly beating and
illusing her child, and her crime became the talk of the town. The young
dressmaker was much impressed by the report of the trial, and the desire
entered her mind of visiting the woman in gaol, and trying to reclaim
her. She had often before, on passing the walls of the borough gaol,
felt impelled to seek admission, with the object of visiting the
inmates, reading the Scriptures to them, and endeavouring to lead them
back to the society whose laws they had violated.

At length she could not resist her impulse to visit the mother. She
entered the gaol-porch, lifted the knocker, and asked the gaoler for
admission. For some reason or other she was refused; but she returned,
repeated her request, and this time she was admitted. The culprit mother
shortly stood before her. When Sarah Martin told the motive of her
visit, the criminal burst into tears, and thanked her. Those tears and
thanks shaped the whole course of Sarah Martin's after-life; and the
poor seamstress, while maintaining herself by her needle, continued to
spend her leisure hours in visiting the prisoners, and endeavouring to
alleviate their condition. She constituted herself their chaplain and
schoolmistress, for at that time they had neither; she read to them from
the Scriptures, and taught them to read and write. She gave up an entire
day in the week for this purpose, besides Sundays, as well as other
intervals of spare time, "feeling," she says, "that the blessing of God
was upon her." She taught the women to knit, to sew, and to cut out;
the sale of the articles enabling her to buy other materials, and to
continue the industrial education thus begun. She also taught the men
to make straw hats, men's and boys' caps, gray cotton shirts, and even
patchwork--anything to keep them out of idleness, and from preying on
their own thoughts. Out of the earnings of the prisoners in this way,
she formed a fund, which she applied to furnishing them with work on
their discharge; thus enabling them again to begin the world honestly,
and at the same time affording her, as she herself says, "the advantage
of observing their conduct."

By attending too exclusively to this prison-work, however, Sarah
Martin's dressmaking business fell off; and the question arose with
her, whether in order to recover her business she was to s