Скачать или смотреть Elizabeth Fry and the patchwork quilts from the Quaker Tapestry

Listen to the story of Elizabeth Fry who challenged the appalling conditions of 19th century prisons, especially for women prisoners who were held with their children.

In 1818 the government decided to send women convicts to Australia. Transportation was traumatic, the women and children were herded into flat carts, manacled and wearing leg irons. They were then pulled through the streets to the jeers of the townspeople, pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables and sods of soil, arriving at the ship terrified and filthy. They remained in the ships hold for the entire 17 week voyage.

Elizabeth arranged that women would be transported in closed carriages, unmanacled, at night and allowed out of the hold once the ship had sailed a mile (too far to swim back). The boredom on the long voyage would lead to fighting and gambling, so Elizabeth Fry introduced a most imaginative scheme. Each woman was to have a bag of useful things, containing; clothing, a comb and brush, soap and towels, a Bible, spectacles, a plate, cutlery, material, wadding, needles, a thimble and threads. Everything needed to make a patchwork quilt during those long days at sea. Over 12,000 prisoners received a bag and Elizabeth visited each of their 106 ships.

See and hear what happens next...