are also six men to be hanged, one of whom has a wife near her confinement, also condemned, and seven young children. Since the awful report came down he has become quite mad from horror of mind. A strait-waistcoat could not keep him within bounds; he had just bitten the turnkey; I saw the man come out with his hand bleeding as I passed the cell. I hear that another who has been tolerably educated and brought up, was doing all he could to harden himself through unbelief, trying to convince himself that religious truths were idle tales." Contemporary light is cast upon this matter by a letter which the Hon. G. H. Bennett addressed to the Corporation of London, relative to the condition of the prison. In it this writer observed:—
A man by the name of Kelly, who was executed some weeks back for robbing a house, counteracted, by his conversation and by the jests he made of all religious subjects, the labours of Dr. Cotton to produce repentance and remorse among the prisoners in the cells; and he died as he lived, hardened and unrepenting. He sent to me the day before his execution, and when I saw him he maintained the innocence of the woman convicted with him (Fricker, before mentioned), asserting that not her, but a boy concealed, opened the door and let him into the house. When I pressed him to tell me the names of the parties concerned, whereby to save the woman’s life, he declined complying without promise of a pardon. I urged as strongly as I could the crime of suffering an innocent woman to be executed to screen criminal accomplices; but it was all to no effect, and he suffered, maintaining to the last the same story. With him was executed a lad of nineteen or twenty years of age, whose fears and remorse Kelly was constantly ridiculing.
About this time, Mrs Fry noted in her journal the encouragement she had received from those who were in authority, as well as the eager and thankful attitude of the poor women themselves. Kindred spirits were
