GURNEY, ELIZABETH, better known under her married name of Mrs Fry, was born in 1780 at Earlham, in Norfolk. While still a girl she was noted for the benevolence of her disposition, which manifested itself even when, on reaching womanhood, she mingled freely in the gay and brilliant society which her wealth and birth opened to her. Before her marriage, however, which took place in 1800, she had retired from the gay frivolities of the fashionable world, of which she had been so fond. Settling in London, she found there a field wide enough even for her wide sympathies. She began her career of active benevolence among the dregs of the capital, by visiting them in their disease-stricken and poverty-stricken homes, and alleviating their miseries according to their several wants. She then extended her visits to the wards of hospitals; and at last found courage to do what few other English ladies of that day could boast—to entrust herself within the precincts of a jail. She there found men, women, and children recklessly huddled together;—from the comparatively innocent young girl imprisoned on suspicion of a petty theft, to the murderer awaiting his execution;—and certain, if they entered the jail with no deep stain on their souls, to leave it familiarized with every known form and degree of vice and crime. The reformation that Mrs Fry accomplished in this sink of iniquity is as well known as the means she employed to effect it; and the title of "the female Howard," which rewarded her philanthropy, by no means too strongly expressed her deserts. To carry out her benevolent designs more thoroughly, she visited the principal jails in Scotland, France, Prussia, Holland, and Denmark; and, from a study of the various systems employed in these countries, obtained some valuable practical hints for the more effective working of her own schemes. The care and labour entailed upon her by her pious philanthropy proved at length too much for her enfeebled constitution, and she died, at length, of sheer exhaustion, at Ramsgate, Oct. 11, 1844. Her death was felt throughout Europe to be a loss to humanity.