Page:Elizabeth Fry (Pitman 1884).djvu/40

32 the labours of Hercules. Few were hopeful of the success of her undertaking, while at times even her undaunted spirit must have doubted. In John Howard's time the prisons of England had been distinguished for vice, filth, brutality, and suffering; and although some little improvement had taken place, it was almost infinitesimal. Old castles, or gate-houses, with damp, dark dungeons and narrow cells, were utilised for penal purposes. It was common to see a box fastened up under one of the narrow, iron-barred windows overlooking the street, with the inscription, "Pity the poor prisoners," the aims being intended for their relief and sustenance. Often the jail was upon a bridge at the entrance of a town, and the damp of the river added to the otherwise unhealthy condition of the place. Bunyan spoke, not altogether allegorically, but rather literally, of the foul "den" in which he passed a good twelve years of his life. Irons and fetters were used to prevent escape, while those who could not obtain the means of subsistence from their friends, suffered the horrors of starvation. Overcrowding, disease, riot, and obscenity united to render these places very Pandemoniums.

It seemed almost hopeless to deal with ferocious and abandoned women. One of them was observed, desperate with rage, tearing the caps from the heads of the other women, and yelling like a savage beast. By so much nearer as woman is to the angels, must he measured her descent into rum when she is degraded. She falls deeper than a man; her degradation is more complete, her nature more demoralised. Whether Mrs. Fry felt unequal just then to the task, or whether family affliction pressed too sorely upon her, we do not know; her journal affords no solution of the problem,