* Interviewer: Mrs. Elizabeth Gurney Fry, you turn 229 years old this May, 65 years of which you lived a bodily existence on earth. In Canada, there is an Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies designed to perpetuate your work. But for most, if anything is known about you, it was that you were a prison reformer and a Quaker!
However, as I have discovered, during your lifetime, you were catapulted to international fame through an amazing involvement in Newgate Gaol, when you were 36 years old and mother of eleven children. We’ll talk about that shortly. You also became better known than any other woman in Britain and arguably Europe, except royalty, at a time women were not public figures in society or church.