The Friends as a body were always anxious to help suffering and misery of every kind. Some gentlemen well known to Mrs. Fry, having learnt of the miserable condition of the women in Newgate, then one of the chief prisons in London, asked her to visit them one winter to see if she could not do something to improve their condition. It was a terrible scene that Mrs. Fry found when, alone with one other lady, she entered Newgate prison in January 1813. In four rooms were crowded nearly 300 women and with them many children. Those who had been tried, and those who had not yet been tried, were all herded together, whether guilty of grave or trifling crimes. There was no woman to take care of them; day and night they were under the charge of one man and his son. They had no employment of any kind; they had no clothing supplied but what they had on when they came. In rags and dirt they slept on the filthy floor without any bedding, and they cooked, lived, and slept in the same rooms. When strangers visited them, as seems to have been allowed, they all started begging, and when they were given any money they at once bought drink, which could be got in the prison. Their language and their conduct were alike terrible, and the governor of the prison himself feared to go amongst them. He begged Mrs. Fry and her companion to remove the watches which hung at their sides lest they should be snatched from them by the women, but they paid no heed to his warning. The two ladies had brought with them a supply of warm garments which they distributed amongst the wretched prisoners, and before leaving each said a few words of prayer, which moved some of their listeners to tears.