That these women should have emerged from the sphere of private and domestic life to become leaders in philanthropy, indicates no small, degree of moral courage on their part; for to women, above all others, quiet and ease and retirement are most natural and welcome. Very few women step beyond the boundaries of home in search of a larger field of usefulness. But when they have desired one, they have had no difficulty in finding it. The ways in which men and women can help their neighbours are innumerable.
It needs but the willing heart and ready hand. Most of the philanthropic workers we have named, however, have scarcely been influenced by choice. The duty lay in their way--it seemed to be the nearest to them--and they set about doing it without desire for fame, or any other reward but the approval of their own conscience.
Among prison-visitors, the name of Sarah Martin is much less known than that of Mrs. Fry, although she preceded her in the work. How she was led to undertake it, furnishes at the same time an illustration of womanly trueheartedness and earnest womanly courage.
Sarah Martin was the daughter of poor parents, and was left an orphan at an early age. She was brought up by her grandmother, at Caistor, near Yarmouth, and earned her living by going out to families as assistant-dressmaker, at a shilling a day. In 1819, a woman was tried and sentenced to imprisonment in Yarmouth Gaol, for cruelly beating and illusing her child, and her crime became the talk of the town. The young dressmaker was much impressed by the report of the trial, and the desire entered her mind of visiting the woman in gaol, and trying to reclaim her. She had often before, on passing the walls of the borough gaol, felt impelled to seek admission, with the object of visiting the inmates, reading the Scriptures to them, and endeavouring to lead them back to the society whose laws they had violated.
At length she could not resist her impulse to visit the mother.
She entered the gaol-porch, lifted the knocker, and asked the gaoler for admission. For some reason or other she was refused;but she returned, repeated her request, and this time she was admitted. The culprit mother shortly stood before her. When Sarah Martin told the motive of her visit, the criminal burst into tears, and thanked her. Those tears and thanks shaped the whole course of Sarah Martin's after-life; and the poor seamstress, while maintaining herself by her needle, continued to spend her leisure hours in visiting the prisoners, and endeavouring to alleviate their condition. She constituted herself their chaplain and schoolmistress, for at that time they had neither; she read to them from the Scriptures, and taught them to read and write. She gave up an entire day in the week for this purpose, besides Sundays, as well as other intervals of spare time, "feeling," she says, "that the blessing of God was upon her." She taught the women to knit, to sew, and to cut out; the sale of the articles enabling her to buy other materials, and to continue the industrial education thus begun. She also taught the men to make straw hats, men's and boys' caps, gray cotton shirts, and even patchwork--anything to keep them out of idleness, and from preying on their own thoughts. Out of the earnings of the prisoners in this way, she formed a fund, which she applied to furnishing them with work on their discharge;thus enabling them again to begin the world honestly, and at the same time affording her, as she herself says, "the advantage of observing their conduct."By attending too exclusively to this prison-work, however, Sarah Martin's dressmaking business fell off; and the question arose with her, whether in order to recover her business she was to suspend her prison-work. But her decision had already been made.
"I had counted the cost," she said, "and my mind, was made up.
If, whilst imparting truth to others, I became exposed to temporal want, the privations so momentary to an individual would not admit of comparison with following the Lord, in thus administering to others." She now devoted six or seven hours every day to the prisoners, converting what would otherwise have been a scene of dissolute idleness into a hive of orderly industry. Newly-admitted prisoners were sometimes refractory, but her persistent gentleness eventually won their respect and co-operation. Men old in years and crime, pert London pickpockets, depraved boys and dissolute sailors, profligate women, smugglers, poachers, and the promiscuous horde of criminals which usually fill the gaol of a seaport and county town, all submitted to the benign influence of this good woman; and under her eyes they might be seen, for the first time in their lives, striving to hold a pen, or to master the characters in a penny primer. She entered into their confidences--watched, wept, prayed, and felt for all by turns.
She strengthened their good resolutions, cheered the hopeless and despairing, and endeavoured to put all, and hold all, in the right road of amendment.
