Mrs. Fry’s fame had spread over Europe, and when she was already fifty-nine, with many grandchildren growing up around her, she decided to visit France and study French prisons. Wherever she went she was received with much enthusiasm. Some of the prisons that she saw she admired very much, but in others she noticed much to criticise, and she always freely expressed her opinions. In some towns in France she was able to form committees of ladies to visit the prisons. After a second visit she prepared a long report for the French government about the prisons she had seen, and the reforms she thought desirable. Repeated requests came to her to visit new places, and she made a third journey to the continent with her brother, when they got as far as Berlin. In Prussia she was treated with much honour by the king and queen, and by many members of the royal family. The following year the King of Prussia came to England, and one of the things he was most anxious to do whilst in London was to be present at one of Mrs. Fry’s visits to Newgate. He came to the prison accompanied by the Lord Mayor and many gentlemen. There in one of the wards Mrs. Fry and some of the ladies were gathered with about sixty of the poor women. She told them that the presence of such distinguished visitors must not be allowed to distract their attention, and she read the Bible and prayed with them as usual. The same day the king drove out to see her at her own house in the country, and she presented to him her large family, sons and daughters, with their wives and twenty-five grandchildren. She writes of the day: “Our meal was handsome and fit for a king, yet not extravagant, everything most complete and nice. I sat by the king, who appeared to enjoy his dinner, perfectly at his ease and very happy with us.” Once more after this Mrs. Fry visited France, but she was growing feeble and tired out with her many labours. She had to suffer some months of illness, during which her daughters tended her with the greatest devotion. She wrote herself that she was much struck in this illness with the manner in which her children had been raised up as her helpers. Many sorrows came to her in her last years from the death of her relations, but suffering and sorrow did not shake her faith. She had the comfort during the last years of her life, of hearing of all the improvements that were being made in the prisons, to reform which she had done so much. To the last she shared all the joys and sorrows of her children and of the other members of her large family. For about two years she led more or less the life of an invalid, and died in October 1845, at the age of sixty-five.