The Angel of Newgate
Author Deborah Swiss celebrates the work of Elizabeth Fry
It is nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. I find myself standing before the Rajah Quilt in the National Museum of Australia. This treasured piece of history, at eleven feet across, is much larger than I had imagined and I feel humbled as I view its rich shades of gold and burnt umber, still vibrant after 170 years. The finely crafted artefact is rendered more precious still by blood stains from the inexperienced fingers that stitched together the patches while their ship crashed through the seas on the 105-day voyage from Great Britain to Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania). An inscription on the quilt’s border pays tribute to Quaker reformer Elizabeth Gurney Fry and her Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners.
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