relative to this prison and its object, and to the wisest
regulations for prison discipline, and the causes of crime.
Indeed, we could not have received more kind and devoted attention
to what was suggested. Elizabeth Fry's manner seemed to awaken new
trains of reflection, and to place the individual value of these
poor creatures before them in a fresh point of view. The Sheriffs
came to our committee-room. They ordered a cell to be given up to
the Committee for the temporary confinement of delinquents; it was
to be made to appear as formidable as possible, and we hope never
to require it.

The soldiers who guarded Newgate were, at our own request,
dismissed. They overlooked the women's wards, and rendered them
very disorderly.... I found poor Woodman lying-in in the common
ward, where she had been suddenly taken ill; herself and little
girl were each doing very well. She was awaiting her execution at
the end of the month. What can be said of such sights as these?...
I read to Woodman, who is not in the state of mind we could wish
for her; indeed, so unnatural is her situation that one can hardly
tell how, or in what manner, to meet her case. She seems afraid to
love her baby, and the very health which is being restored to her
produces irritation of mind.

This last entry furnishes, incidentally, proof of the barbarity of the
laws of Christian England at that time. Human life was of no account
compared with the robbery of a few shillings, or the cutting down of a
tree. This matter of capital punishment, in its turn, attracted the
attention of the Quaker community, together with other philanthropic
individuals, and the statute book was in time freed from many of the
sanguinary enactments which had, prior to that period, disgraced it.