The Woman They Told Her Not to Touch

In February 1813, Elizabeth Fry walked through the iron gates of London's Newgate Prison and into a scene that made seasoned guards flinch. Three hundred women and their children were crammed into two rooms, sleeping on bare stone without bedding, many half-clothed and sick. Respectable society had written them off. Fellow reformers warned Fry to stay away — these women were beyond help, and besides, a proper Quaker mother of eleven had no business in such a place.…