Page:Elizabeth Fry (Pitman 1884).djvu/189

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PRISON ENTERPRISE.
181

there; and that the inmates only left its shelter to secure situations in service. In addition to these cheering items, she had the satisfaction of holding communications with many princely, noble, and royal personages on the Continent, respecting the progress of her favourite work, and the new regulations and buildings then adopted.

To return to her home-work and its ramifications, will only be to prove how far the great principles which she had taught were bearing fruit. The Government Inspectors were working hard upon the lines laid down by Mrs. Fry; and if at times they found anything which clashed with their own pre-conceived ideas of what a prison should be, they were always ready to make allowance for the difficulties of pioneer-work, such as this lady and her coadjutors had to do at Newgate. At Paramatta, New South Wales, where, according to a letter from the Rev. Samuel Marsden in an earlier part of this work, the condition of the female convicts had been scandalous to the Government which shipped them out there, and deplorable in the extreme for the poor creatures themselves, a large factory had been erected, designed for the reception of the convicts upon their landing. It served its purpose well, being commodious enough to receive not only the new importations, but the refractory women also, who were returned from their situations. It was well managed; the inmates being divided into three classes, and treated with more or less kindness accordingly. True, at one time, even after the erection of this factory, from the management being entrusted to inefficient hands, a scene of disorder and misrule had prevailed; but that had been promptly and firmly repressed. Hard labour and strict discipline had suc-