Our prison culture is more barbaric than it was in 1823: Elizabeth Fry ‘The Angel of Prisons’ reviewed

The Angel of Prisons dramatises the life of the penal reformer Elizabeth Fry, who lived near Canning Town. She married a wealthy Quaker, Joseph Fry, who encouraged her philanthropic work which she managed to pursue while raising 12 children. Early in life, Fry had been a party girl who loved dancing, and this production shows her practising her moves to a soundtrack of thumping contemporary music. The script, by James Kenworth, blends present-day London vernacular with the dialect of the early 19th century. It’s easy to watch and it delivers heaps of information without any hint of lecture-hall formality.

When Fry visited the mixed-gender Newgate Prison near the Old Bailey she found her vocation. In those days, lawlessness was considered a heritable quality and the prison system was treated as a landfill site where criminals could be dumped for good. The lice-ridden cells were full of drunken women holding sickly babies fathered by the male convicts. Affluent visitors bought tickets to gawp at these infernal surroundings. But at least the female convicts had escaped with their lives. Execution was considered an enlightened means of protecting the public from crime by expunging polluted genes. We hear from a high court judge – evidently a thoughtful and educated man – who sums up the social advantages of the gallows. ‘I prefer to hang,’ he says, as if speaking of an obvious and universal good. There were more than 200 offences that attracted the death penalty, including the theft of food and ‘keeping the company of gypsies for a month’. This strange law imperilled gypsies themselves by making them potential witnesses to a capital offence. They were apt to be murdered by anyone who feared arrest for ‘keeping company’ with them.

Women who worked as servants were sometimes raped by an employer who promptly dismissed them for ‘lewdness’. Abandoned and penniless, such women fell prey to gangs of men who forced them to steal or to pass counterfeit currency. The women were jailed while the men escaped. Their only solace in prison was liquor.

Until Fry arrived, no one thought that convicts were capable of acquiring skills or leading useful lives. As a Quaker she believed that all humans shone with an inner light and her faith was rewarded when she saw how quickly the women seized the chance to learn and to make money. She tried to set up a Bible class but the prison authorities declined until they were assured that her husband fully supported her campaign. Female convicts were taught to knit garments which Fry sold through a shop in Fenchurch Street and she allowed the prisoners to keep a good chunk of the profits. This gave them a means of living honestly after their release.

Fry was the first woman to present evidence to parliament and her activism led to the Gaols Act 1823 which segregated prisoners by sex. As an additional safeguard, female warders patrolled the corridors and their presence lowered the number of babies born in prison. Prior to 1823, male convicts were able to pay the guards to unlock women’s cells at night. Nowadays our prisons are not so enlightened. Access to women’s quarters is an option guaranteed to any male convict, even a rapist, who identifies as ‘female’. No bribes need be paid either. Our prison culture is more barbaric than it was in 1823.

Wonderville is a new venue in Haymarket that stages ‘cabaret’ acts. Really, it’s music-hall and it’s a blast. Abi Collins is a magician and hypnotist whose illusions don’t work. That’s the joke. She invites a male volunteer on to the stage and she mesmerises him with a snap of her fingers. He lies on his back, wide awake, while she impersonates his voice as if she holds him entirely in her power. Watching this, the giggling viewer feels obliged to pretend that the trick has worked. She’s hilarious. Like a female Tommy Cooper who keeps soldiering on while her illusions fall to pieces.

The headline act, Matricks, is an old-fashioned trio consisting of a wizard, centre-stage, in loose dark clothes, flanked by two spangled beauties in tight swimsuits. They perform levitation and disappearing tricks. A large wheeled box appears and one of the beauties climbs inside. The doors are shuttered and covered with a magic cloth. Then the wizard opens the box to reveal a void. The beauty has vanished. The box is swung around to prove that the missing actress is not concealed on stage. The magic cloth descends again and after a few seconds – and a tell-tale ‘donk’ from within the box – the doors are flung open and the spangled beauty reappears. Corny but effective. Illusions are a strange branch of entertainment because they create the opposite of satisfaction. The more puzzling the trick, the more successful it is. Frustration is fulfilment.