Page:Elizabeth Fry (Pitman 1884).djvu/105

this very vessel, the George Hibbert, 150 female convicts, with forty-one children; also nine free women, carrying with them twenty-three young children, who were going out to their husbands who had been transported previously. When it is remembered that these people were laying the foundations of new colonies, and peopling them with their descendants, it must be conceded that in her efforts to humanise and christianise them, Mrs. Fry's far-reaching philanthropy became a great national benefit. With modest thankfulness, she herself records, after an interview with Queen Adelaide and some of the royal family, "Surely, the result of our labours has hitherto been beyond our most sanguine expectations, as to the improved state of our prisons, female convict-ships, and the convicts in New South Wales."

 

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