So, there's another good woman of note

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Q.� Who's she

A.� To quote a spokesman for the Bank of England: 'Elizabeth Fry was a notable philanthropist and social reformer who undertook a lot of initiatives to reform women's prisons, workhouses and mental institutions. Ultimately, she was a champion of all who were needy.'

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Q.� Seems a fine choice. Biography please

A.� Born in Norwich in 1780, Elizabeth was the third daughter of John Gurney, a wealthy wool merchant and banker. He was also a member of the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers - a religious group usually linked with social reform. At 20, she married Joseph Fry, a Quaker banker. He was one of the chocolate-making Fry family of Bristol.

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Q.� Children

A.� Yes - 10. But she still kept up her charitable work of nursing, teaching and healthcare. She was ordained a Quaker preacher in 1811. Despite all this, she didn't feel she was doing enough. In 1812 she wrote in her diary 'I fear that my life is slipping away to little purpose.' That changed in 1813.

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Q.� Why

A.� With a friend, she visited the women inmates at London's notorious Newgate prison. Her intention was to read The Bible and preach, but she was horrified by the conditions and the women's behaviour. She soon made an impression, though, as she spoke to the prisoners about how their lives could be improved.

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Q.� How

A.� She publicised the abuses she had seen in the prison, demanding separation of the sexes, more food and clothing and better supervision. In 1817, she set up the Association for the Improvement of Female Prisoners in Newgate. She started a prison school and helped the women make clothes to sell. She later began a programme of visits to prisons in the north of England and Scotland. Like Florence Nightingale, she also took an interest in hospitals and believed women had qualities to bring to these institutions that men did not.

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Q.� And word of her work spread

A.� Her achievements at Newgate led to the setting up of ladies' committees in other towns in Britain, in Europe - and even the Russian court. Her work also attracted the interest of Queen Victoria who made a donation of �50 and later gave Elizabeth Fry a royal audience. In her journal, Victoria wrote that she considered Fry a 'very superior person'. Some believe that Victoria, 40 years younger than Fry, might have modelled herself on this woman who combined the roles of mother and public figure.

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Q.� She worked to the end

A.� Yes - and not without problems. Many of her children married non-Quakers and her husband got into trouble in 1828 when his bank crashed. The Society of Friends disowned him because he had put other people's money at risk. Elizabeth died on 12 October, 1845.

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June Rose, in Prison Pioneer: The Story of Elizabeth Fry (1994), said of her: 'Through her personal courage and involvement, Elizabeth Fry alerted the nations of Europe to the cruelty and filth in the prisons and revealed the individual human faces behind the prison bars. Her own passionate desire to lead a useful life disturbed the placid, vapid existence of women in Victorian England and changed forever the confines of respectable femininity. The name of Elizabeth Fry broadened the appeal of the Quaker faith ... Over 200 years after her birth, she seems a brave and modern woman, battling with the injustices of her time.'

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Steve Cunningham