Editing Elizabeth Fry (section)

===Penal transportation===
The death penalty was common for even minor offences. Initially giving what comfort she could to those facing death, Fry worked to get death sentences commuted to deportation to Australia. By 1818 [[Hannah Bevan]], Elizabeth Pryor, [[Elizabeth Hanbury]], and Katherine Fry were visiting convict ships, providing the female convicts comforts for the voyage, and promoting measures for the fulfilling and useful occupation for the women and education for their children. (Later, Elizabeth Pryor was censured by the Ladies' Society, after she asked the government authorities for remuneration for her years of unpaid work.)<ref name="Frost 2008">{{cite book|last=Frost|first=Lucy|chapter=Gifts of Patchwork and Visits to Whitehall: The British Ladies' Society and Female Convict Ships|date=2008|location=Newcastle, UK|pages=2–18|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f1sZBwAAQBAJ&q=Hannah+Bennett+&pg=PA10|editor-last=Thomas|editor-first=Sue|title=Victorian Traffic: Identity, Exchange, Performance|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-1025-8}}</ref>

Fry campaigned for the rights and welfare of prisoners who were being [[Penal transportation|transported]]. 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. They were pelted with rotten food and filth by the people of the city. Fear of what was about to happen was often enough to cause riots among the women condemned to transportation, on the evening before they were to go. Fry persuaded the governor of the prison to send the women in closed carriages and spare them this last indignity before transportation, with Fry and the other women of the Ladies' Society accompanying those transports to the docks. 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. She also included a bible, and useful items such as string and knives and forks, in this vital care package.<ref name="Frost 2008"/> 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.<ref>[https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/sites/phh/files/field/media/file/2020-09/women-transported.pdf "Women Transported", Parramatta Heritage Centre, p. 13]</ref>

Fry visited 106 transport ships and saw 12,000 convicts. Her work helped to start a movement for the abolition of transportation. Transportation was officially abolished in 1868; however, Elizabeth Fry was still visiting transportation ships until 1843.<ref name="Bardens">{{cite book |last1=Bardens |first1=Dennis |title=Elizabeth Fry: Britain's second lady on the five-pound note |date=2004 |publisher=Chanadon |location=London |isbn=0954197356}}</ref>