Elizabeth Fry was born in 1780 and married Joseph Fry, the son of a successful Essex merchant in 1800. For more than twenty years they lived at the White House at Plashet Grove, East Ham. In 1813, Elizabeth Fry , a Quaker, made her first visit to Newgate Prison. She was appalled by the horrors of Newgate, where women and their children were crammed thirty to a cell in absolute squalor, .
and devoted herself to improving prison She was also opposed to the death penalty and campaigned vigorously for its abolition. At that time more than 200 offences, including the theft of clothing, still carried the death penalty.