TO DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20615, 13 October 1928, Page 6

TO DAY IN HISTORY

OCTOBER 13 Born: Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., Windsor, 1453 ; Sophia, Electress of Hanover, mother of George L, Mayence, 1630; Maurice, Marshal Saxe, general, Dresden, 1696; Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 1784. Died: Claudius, Roman Emperor, poisoned, 54 a.d.; Pope Gregory, XII., 1417; Pope Pius HL, 1503; Theodore Beza, eminent reformer, Geneva, 1605; Thomas Harrison, parliamentary general, executed, 1660; Dr. John Gill, Baptist divine, Southwark, 1771; Joachim Murat, Bonapartist King of Naples, shot, 1815; Antonio Canova, sculptor, Venice, 1822; Mrs Elizabeth Fry, philantropist, Ramsgate, 1845. Mrs Fry. It was reserved for a woman to carry out the work of amelioration of prison conditions begun by John Howard, by inaugurating through her philanthropic exertions these enlarged views on the subject of prison discipline now so conspicuously characterized in legislative practice. In recording the name of Elizabeth Fry we inscribe that of a true heroine, who made the moral and physical well-being of her fallen brothers and sisters the aim and study of her life, with the same spirit of devotedness and self-sacrifice which more recently was exhibited in Miss Florence Nightingale. Mrs Fry’s maiden name was Gurney, and both by father and mother’s side she inherited eminently the Quaker element; her father, John Gurney, of Earlham in Norfolk, being a distinguished member of the Society of Friends, and her mother a great-grand-daughter of the celebrated Quaker apologist, Robert Barclay. At the age of eighteen, however, she was much impressed by a sermon delivered by William Savery, an American Quaker, and from that period her religious views became gradually more and more decided. They were more steadfastly established by her marriage shortly afterwards, to Mr Joseph Fry, a Quaker of the strictest sort and the junior partner of an extensive mercantile firm in London. It was not till a good many years subsequently that her attention was first directed to the question of prisoners and prison-discipline; a subject which appears to have first been suggested to her mind by a visit paid, along with some members of the Society of Friends, to the condemned cell in Newgate in 1913. The impressions produced upon her by the spectacles which she witnessed in that prison of profligacy, poverty and filth, were such that she set her energies seriously forthwith to the task of devising some method for the alleviation of these scenes of horror. ■With the approbation of the magistrates of Middlesex, she commenced the establishment in the female wards, of a school, for the purpose of affording the inmates instruction as well as employment. She also succeeded in organizing an association of ladies for visiting the female prisoners in Newgate, an occupation in which she herself took a most active share, conversing and praying writh them, and by her earnest kindness exercising a softening influence on the hearts of even the most depraved. Through her exertions and representations a most marked change was effected in the conditions of Newgate, more especially the female department, and the improved state of the prison attracted the attention of individuals of the highest authority and position in the land. But Mrs Fry’s labours did not cease with Newgate. She gradually extended her sphere and soon made the general subject of prison-discipline the object of consideration and amendment, and before committees both of the Lords and Commons, she was examined as an important and valuable auxiliary in the cause of criminal reform. OCTOBER 14 Born: James 11., of England, 1633; William Penn, London, 1644; Charles Abbot Lord Colchester, lawyer and statesman, Abingdon, 1757. Died: Harold, last Saxon king of England, slain al Battle of Hastings, 1066; Pierre Gassendi, mathematician and philosopher, Paris, 1655; Paul Scarron, humorous writer, Paris, 1660; John Henley (“Orator Henley”), London, 1756; James, Marshal Keith, killed at Hochkirken, 1758; Prince Gregory Alexander Potemkin, favourite of Empress Catherine, Cherson, 1791; Samuel Phillips, novelist, Brighton, 1854. Field-Marshal Keith. Among the eight generals of Frederick the Great, who, on foot, surround Rauch’s magnificent equestrian statue of the monarch of Berlin, one is a Briton. He was descender! from a Scots family, once as great in wealth and station as any of the Hamiltons or the Douglases, but which went out in the eighteenth century like a quenched light, in consequence of taking a wrong line of politics. James Edward Keith, and his brother, the Earl Marischal, when very young men, were engaged in the rebellion of 1715-16, and last all but their lives. Abroad they rose by their talents into positions historically more distinguished than thase which their youthful imprudence had forfeited. The younger brother, James, first served the Tsar in his wars against Poland and Turkey, but becoming discontented with the favouritism which prevailed in the Russian Army, and conceiving himself treated with injustice, he gave in his resignation in 1747, and was admitted into the Prussian service as a fieldmarshal. Frederick the Great made him his favourite companion, and together they travelled incognito through Germany, Poland Hungary. Keith also invented a game in imitation of chess, which delighted the king so much that he had some thousands of armed men cast in metal by which he could arrange battles and sieges. On August 29, 1756, he entered with the king into Dresden, where he had the archives opened to carry away the documents that particuL larly interested the Prussian Court; he also managed the admirable retreat of the army from Olmutz in the presence of a superior force, without the loss of a single gun; and took part in all the great battles of the period. He was killed in that of Hochkirken, October 14. 1758. His correspondence with Frederick, written in French, possesses much historical interest.