[4] Fry kept extensive diaries, in which she wrote explicitly of the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation.

As one of the oldest girls in the family, Elizabeth was partly responsible for the care and education of the younger children, including her brother Joseph John Gurney, a philanthropist.

They married on 19 August 1800 at the Norwich Goat Lane Friends Meeting House, and moved to St Mildred's Court in the City of London.

[11][12] They had eleven children, five sons and six daughters: According to her diary, Elizabeth Fry was moved by the preaching of Priscilla Hannah Gurney, Deborah Darby, and William Savery.

[17] This approach was copied elsewhere and led to the eventual creation of the British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners in 1821.

It was largely ineffective, as it contained no mechanism to ensure its provisions were followed; some institutions, such as town gaols and debtors' prisons, were not regulated by the Act.

(Later, Elizabeth Pryor was censured by the Ladies' Society, after she asked the government authorities for remuneration for her years of unpaid work.

Women from Newgate Prison on their way to the ships were being taken through the streets of London in open carts, often in chains, huddled together with their few possessions.

She visited prison ships and persuaded captains to implement systems to ensure each woman and child would at least get a share of food and water on the long journey.

Later she arranged for each woman to be given packages of material and sewing tools so that they could use the long journey to make quilts and have something to sell, as well as useful skills, when they reached their destination.

[21] Fry also lobbied for better conditions for the women who had already been transported to the colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, including aspects of the factories that they worked in.

Thomas Fowell Buxton, Fry's brother-in-law, was elected to Parliament for Weymouth and began to promote her work among his fellow MPs.

Fry saw her friend Stephen Grellet and another Quaker, William Allen, off at the docks on their own journey in the cause of prison reform in the autumn of 1818.

[18] Elizabeth Fry also helped the homeless, establishing a "nightly shelter" in London after seeing the body of a young boy in the winter of 1819–1820.

[27] Her programme inspired Florence Nightingale, who took a team of Fry's nurses to assist wounded soldiers in the Crimean War.

Her programme of nurse training also inspired Theodor Fliedner who visited her in London and set up something similar in Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldorf.

In 1842, Frederick William IV of Prussia went to see Fry in Newgate Prison during an official visit to Great Britain.

The King of Prussia, who had met the social reformer during her previous tours of the continent promoting welfare change and humanitarianism, was so impressed by her work that he told his reluctant courtiers that he would personally visit the gaol when he was in London.

[14] Seamen of the Ramsgate Coast Guard flew their flag at half mast in respect for Fry; a practice that until this occasion had been officially reserved for the death of a ruling monarch.

With the intention of organising a suitable memorial to Fry, a meeting was held in June 1846, chaired by the Lord Mayor of London.

Lord Ashley, amongst a group of prominent reformers and admirers of Fry, including the Bishop of Norwich and the diplomat Christian von Bunsen, promoting adoption of a charitable scheme to honour Fry, told the meeting that founding an asylum would be in "perfect harmony with her life, her character, her feelings".

Funding came via subscriptions from various city companies and private individuals, supplemented by income from the inmates' laundry and needlework.

Her name heads the list on the southern face of the Reformers' Monument in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

She is depicted in stained glass at All Saints' Church, Cambridge alongside Edith Cavell and Josephine Butler.

The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies honours her memory by advocating for women who are in the criminal justice system.

A road is named for Fry at Guilford College, a school in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was founded by Quakers.

Her grave at the former Society of Friends Burial Ground, located off Whiting Avenue in Barking, Essex, was restored and received a new commemorative marble plinth in October 2003.

In February 2007, a plaque was erected in her honour at the Friends Meeting House in Upper Goat Lane, Norwich.