A POOR NEEDLEWOMAN.A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.—Chapter IV.ByC. A. MACIRONE.A prisonin a little seaport town in England—a jail where criminals of every type, sex, and class herded together.The fresh sea air outside those locked and barred doors inspired health and brightness to the busy population, but within, instead of the rush of the waves, the happy sounds of passing people and children, the rattle of coach and cart, and the cries of hawkers—within, there were sounds indeed, but the vile language of criminals, oaths and curses, whose time was given to gaming, fighting, and quarrelling—unemployed, uncontrolled, without schoolmaster or clergyman, or any attempt at reformation—without any divine worship; it was a place where every wickedness was roused and fostered, and there was neither hope nor help for those inmates who were not entirely lost.“The place itself was fit for such inhabitants—cells underground quite dark and unventilated, suffocatingly hot in summer, and unfit for the confinement of any human being, the whole place unhealthy and filthy; the prisoners were infected with vermin and skin disease.”[1]Into this pandemonium in August, 1819, a woman was sent, committed for a most unnatural crime. It was a mother who had forgotten her sucking child! She had no compassion on her helpless infant, but had cruelly beaten and ill-used it.The inhabitants of the bright little town took cheerfully the accounts of the trial of this woman, and went about their usual avocations as quietly and busily as usual.But one poor woman, a dressmaker, not peculiarly gifted with any power or influence beyond an intense love and sympathy, plain, poor, and unknown—the horror of the thought of this lost woman, of what she was, what she would suffer, what yet it might be possible to do for her, possessed her whole soul with a mighty impulse to try what even she would do in her Master’s strength and with His blessing.This young woman, Sarah Martin, lived in the little village of Caistor, near Yarmouth, with an old grandmother whom she tended; she walked to and fro to her needlework, passing the jail, and she had long wished in some way she could help the miserable people within it. If she could only read the Bible to them, show them some love and sympathy, see for herself if there could be any way of helping them, of making them see the divine love and compassion which was the life of her own soul, if any prodigal son could be awakened to the Father’s love—always ready to bless, always glad to forgive—she thought she would die happier. So in her sudden horror of the condition of the condemned mother, all her impulses sprang into active life, and she went to the jail for permission to see her. Of course her petition was refused at first, and obstacles on all sides delayed her success, but her patience and energy were equal to the occasion, and as she cared nothing for herself, and had a sublime faith in the help which is never refused to His children when they ask for it, she won her way at last. “By her love she overcame.” At first, when that mother saw her, she only wondered that anyone would care to come to her. But when the love and pity of real sympathy became a reality before her, tears and thanks gushed from her poor broken heart like the waters from the rock in the wilderness, and the good work was begun.Once admitted within the prison, her quick intelligence saw what could be done, and her work grew and prospered. She began reading to the prisoners, and that was gradually valued as their greatest comfort. Then she began to teach them reading, so as to improve the hours of her absence; gradually she taught them various works, and small sums were given to her to buy materials. First, (being a very expert needlewoman), she taught the women to make sets of baby clothes, and then these were sold, and made a fund for prisoners after their discharge. The men were taught to make straw hats, bone spoons, and seats; even patchwork the men would delight in, and learnt to sew gray cotton shirts, while she begged for and got materials from anyone who would or could help, and contrived to make odds and ends into materials.Very gradually and steadily she made the sacredness of Sunday a rest and a blessing—a contrast to the employments of the week. And she borrowed drawings and prints to show and interest them, and one of these was Retzsch’s sketch of “The chess-players,” a young student playing a game for his soul, an angel on one hand, and Satan on theother side. This interested some of the men so much that they begged to be allowed to copy it, and hours of happy study and improvement passed in helping those prisoners to develop powers they never knew they possessed.All these plans encroached more and more on her own private earnings, but the service of her Master was to her the greatest luxury and privilege, and her own occupations became less and less capable of giving her even the very scanty needs of her own life. Also we must remember that besides her attendance at the prison, her readings and instructions, her classes for needlework and other arts, she had to prepare all her work, cutting it out and arranging it, get together the books and materials used, and on Sunday she managed to get the prisoners together to a morning, and even an evening, service, for which she chose such prayers and Bible readings as she found they could follow, and wrote the addresses which were included in the services, which were eminently suited to that very peculiar audience.For six or seven hours daily she was at the prison, and converted that which at the best would have been vicious idleness into a hive of industry and order, and a good preparation for a more useful and happy life when that in the prison ended.There is not on record a single instance of failure in this life of complete self-devotion. Those who at first were stubborn and saucy, shallow and self-conceited, full of cavils and objections, as time went on and her influence made itself felt, became anxious to learn, to be allowed to work, and to share in the busy life around. Young men as impudent as they were ignorant, beginning by learning one verse to please her, went on to long passages, and even the dullest found the interest and refreshment of learning a few lines every day and working to some useful purpose.We must remember that this was accomplished without any official authority whatever, only the most overwhelming persuasion on their part that her whole heart was set upon doing them good, and making them happier and better. And this was not all. It involved many other claims on her time and strength, inquiries for friends, care for those who had begun a better life, and whom she managed still to keep true to their new resolutions and better lives.On the few evenings she would be free to see her own friends and those who were interested in her work and would help in it, she would take plenty of work with her, and get all those present to help in carrying out her plans. Old pieces of stuffs, paper, old drawings, scraps that seemed mere litter would, by her active and inventive mind, be turned to some good use.Her day was closed, after her exhausting labours, by no return to a cheerful home where rest and welcome and sympathy, food and comfort, were waiting for her, but a lonely locked-up room, fireless and cheerless, dark and lonely, where all had to be done by her own tired hands. Her account books, her notes of her work, and the poor for whom she was fighting all the powers of evil, had to be written.These account books, of every item of her expenditure, are now in the public library at Yarmouth. They record the name and career of every prisoner she visited, her experience of their character and development. And all this time she was living in the most absolute poverty, and yet of total unconcern as to her temporal support. She said, “God was my Master, and would not forsake His servant; He was my father, and could not forget His child.”Meantime the Corporation had no expense for a chaplain or a schoolmaster. She supplied the place of both, but as time went on some members of the Corporation wished to make some pecuniary provision for her wants out of the borough funds, but they desisted in consequence of her most earnest opposition.At last it was wisely intimated (as theEdinburgh Reviewwrites) to this high-souled woman, “If we permit you to visit the prison, you must submit to our terms” (in spite of her earnest appeal, and her urging that her work, being known to be a voluntary work, had greater influence). And so these worshipful gentlemen, who were then making use of Sarah Martin as a substitute for the schoolmaster and the chaplain, whom it was by law their bounden duty to have appointed, converted her into their salaried servant by the munificent grant of £12 per annum.Sarah Martin lived for two years in the receipt of this memorable evidence of Corporation bounty, but her health and strength was failing fast, and it was with increasing suffering and difficulty that she continued her work in the prison until April, 1843, when a most painful disease, increasing rapidly, prevented all exertion.It is a triumphant sequel to a life of incessant self-denial and heroic exertion to find that this brave woman would cheer the sacred loneliness of her entrance into the dark valley of the shadow of death with songs of victory and triumph, and when the nurse told her that she believed the time of her departure was at hand, she, clapping her hands together, exclaimed, “Thank God! thank God!” and never spake more. It was once truly said, “A little faith will take you to Heaven; but a great faith will bring Heaven to you.”Captain Williams, the Inspector of Prisons, before quoted, says of her, “Her simple unostentatious, yet energetic devotion to the interest of the outcast and the destitute, her gentle disposition, never irritated by disappointment, nor her charity straightened by ingratitude, presents a combination of qualities which imagination sometimes portrays as the ideal of what is pure and beautiful, but which are rarely found embodied in humanity. She was no titled sister of charity, but was silently felt and acknowledged to be one by the many outcast and destitute persons who received encouragement from her lips, and relief from her hands, and a higher and purer life from her influence, and by the few who were witnesses of her good works.”We remember, as who does not, the noble faith of Mrs. Fry, who fought a like battle in the walls of a prison. Mrs. Fry was a woman of high education, of assured position, of practised eloquence, and supported by influential and important friends. But Sarah Martin was a poor lone woman, plain and little educated, endowed only by the magnificence of her faith and love with the energy of waging such a war.TheEdinburgh Review, in an eloquent article on theLife and Poems of Sarah Martin, closes with the following words:“It is the business of literature to make such a life stand out from the masses of ordinary existences with something of the distinctness with which a lofty building uprears itself in the confusion of a distant view. It should be made to attract all eyes, and to excite the hearts of all persons who think the welfare of their fellow mortals an object of interest or duty; it should be included in collections of biography, and chronicled in the high places of history; men should be taught to estimate it as that of one whose philanthropy has entitled her to renown, and children to associate the name of Sarah Martin with those of Howard, Buxton, Fry, the most benevolent of mankind.”
A DREAM OF FAIR SERVICE.—Chapter IV.
ByC. A. MACIRONE.
A prisonin a little seaport town in England—a jail where criminals of every type, sex, and class herded together.
The fresh sea air outside those locked and barred doors inspired health and brightness to the busy population, but within, instead of the rush of the waves, the happy sounds of passing people and children, the rattle of coach and cart, and the cries of hawkers—within, there were sounds indeed, but the vile language of criminals, oaths and curses, whose time was given to gaming, fighting, and quarrelling—unemployed, uncontrolled, without schoolmaster or clergyman, or any attempt at reformation—without any divine worship; it was a place where every wickedness was roused and fostered, and there was neither hope nor help for those inmates who were not entirely lost.
“The place itself was fit for such inhabitants—cells underground quite dark and unventilated, suffocatingly hot in summer, and unfit for the confinement of any human being, the whole place unhealthy and filthy; the prisoners were infected with vermin and skin disease.”[1]
Into this pandemonium in August, 1819, a woman was sent, committed for a most unnatural crime. It was a mother who had forgotten her sucking child! She had no compassion on her helpless infant, but had cruelly beaten and ill-used it.
The inhabitants of the bright little town took cheerfully the accounts of the trial of this woman, and went about their usual avocations as quietly and busily as usual.
But one poor woman, a dressmaker, not peculiarly gifted with any power or influence beyond an intense love and sympathy, plain, poor, and unknown—the horror of the thought of this lost woman, of what she was, what she would suffer, what yet it might be possible to do for her, possessed her whole soul with a mighty impulse to try what even she would do in her Master’s strength and with His blessing.
This young woman, Sarah Martin, lived in the little village of Caistor, near Yarmouth, with an old grandmother whom she tended; she walked to and fro to her needlework, passing the jail, and she had long wished in some way she could help the miserable people within it. If she could only read the Bible to them, show them some love and sympathy, see for herself if there could be any way of helping them, of making them see the divine love and compassion which was the life of her own soul, if any prodigal son could be awakened to the Father’s love—always ready to bless, always glad to forgive—she thought she would die happier. So in her sudden horror of the condition of the condemned mother, all her impulses sprang into active life, and she went to the jail for permission to see her. Of course her petition was refused at first, and obstacles on all sides delayed her success, but her patience and energy were equal to the occasion, and as she cared nothing for herself, and had a sublime faith in the help which is never refused to His children when they ask for it, she won her way at last. “By her love she overcame.” At first, when that mother saw her, she only wondered that anyone would care to come to her. But when the love and pity of real sympathy became a reality before her, tears and thanks gushed from her poor broken heart like the waters from the rock in the wilderness, and the good work was begun.
Once admitted within the prison, her quick intelligence saw what could be done, and her work grew and prospered. She began reading to the prisoners, and that was gradually valued as their greatest comfort. Then she began to teach them reading, so as to improve the hours of her absence; gradually she taught them various works, and small sums were given to her to buy materials. First, (being a very expert needlewoman), she taught the women to make sets of baby clothes, and then these were sold, and made a fund for prisoners after their discharge. The men were taught to make straw hats, bone spoons, and seats; even patchwork the men would delight in, and learnt to sew gray cotton shirts, while she begged for and got materials from anyone who would or could help, and contrived to make odds and ends into materials.
Very gradually and steadily she made the sacredness of Sunday a rest and a blessing—a contrast to the employments of the week. And she borrowed drawings and prints to show and interest them, and one of these was Retzsch’s sketch of “The chess-players,” a young student playing a game for his soul, an angel on one hand, and Satan on theother side. This interested some of the men so much that they begged to be allowed to copy it, and hours of happy study and improvement passed in helping those prisoners to develop powers they never knew they possessed.
All these plans encroached more and more on her own private earnings, but the service of her Master was to her the greatest luxury and privilege, and her own occupations became less and less capable of giving her even the very scanty needs of her own life. Also we must remember that besides her attendance at the prison, her readings and instructions, her classes for needlework and other arts, she had to prepare all her work, cutting it out and arranging it, get together the books and materials used, and on Sunday she managed to get the prisoners together to a morning, and even an evening, service, for which she chose such prayers and Bible readings as she found they could follow, and wrote the addresses which were included in the services, which were eminently suited to that very peculiar audience.
For six or seven hours daily she was at the prison, and converted that which at the best would have been vicious idleness into a hive of industry and order, and a good preparation for a more useful and happy life when that in the prison ended.
There is not on record a single instance of failure in this life of complete self-devotion. Those who at first were stubborn and saucy, shallow and self-conceited, full of cavils and objections, as time went on and her influence made itself felt, became anxious to learn, to be allowed to work, and to share in the busy life around. Young men as impudent as they were ignorant, beginning by learning one verse to please her, went on to long passages, and even the dullest found the interest and refreshment of learning a few lines every day and working to some useful purpose.
We must remember that this was accomplished without any official authority whatever, only the most overwhelming persuasion on their part that her whole heart was set upon doing them good, and making them happier and better. And this was not all. It involved many other claims on her time and strength, inquiries for friends, care for those who had begun a better life, and whom she managed still to keep true to their new resolutions and better lives.
On the few evenings she would be free to see her own friends and those who were interested in her work and would help in it, she would take plenty of work with her, and get all those present to help in carrying out her plans. Old pieces of stuffs, paper, old drawings, scraps that seemed mere litter would, by her active and inventive mind, be turned to some good use.
Her day was closed, after her exhausting labours, by no return to a cheerful home where rest and welcome and sympathy, food and comfort, were waiting for her, but a lonely locked-up room, fireless and cheerless, dark and lonely, where all had to be done by her own tired hands. Her account books, her notes of her work, and the poor for whom she was fighting all the powers of evil, had to be written.
These account books, of every item of her expenditure, are now in the public library at Yarmouth. They record the name and career of every prisoner she visited, her experience of their character and development. And all this time she was living in the most absolute poverty, and yet of total unconcern as to her temporal support. She said, “God was my Master, and would not forsake His servant; He was my father, and could not forget His child.”
Meantime the Corporation had no expense for a chaplain or a schoolmaster. She supplied the place of both, but as time went on some members of the Corporation wished to make some pecuniary provision for her wants out of the borough funds, but they desisted in consequence of her most earnest opposition.
At last it was wisely intimated (as theEdinburgh Reviewwrites) to this high-souled woman, “If we permit you to visit the prison, you must submit to our terms” (in spite of her earnest appeal, and her urging that her work, being known to be a voluntary work, had greater influence). And so these worshipful gentlemen, who were then making use of Sarah Martin as a substitute for the schoolmaster and the chaplain, whom it was by law their bounden duty to have appointed, converted her into their salaried servant by the munificent grant of £12 per annum.
Sarah Martin lived for two years in the receipt of this memorable evidence of Corporation bounty, but her health and strength was failing fast, and it was with increasing suffering and difficulty that she continued her work in the prison until April, 1843, when a most painful disease, increasing rapidly, prevented all exertion.
It is a triumphant sequel to a life of incessant self-denial and heroic exertion to find that this brave woman would cheer the sacred loneliness of her entrance into the dark valley of the shadow of death with songs of victory and triumph, and when the nurse told her that she believed the time of her departure was at hand, she, clapping her hands together, exclaimed, “Thank God! thank God!” and never spake more. It was once truly said, “A little faith will take you to Heaven; but a great faith will bring Heaven to you.”
Captain Williams, the Inspector of Prisons, before quoted, says of her, “Her simple unostentatious, yet energetic devotion to the interest of the outcast and the destitute, her gentle disposition, never irritated by disappointment, nor her charity straightened by ingratitude, presents a combination of qualities which imagination sometimes portrays as the ideal of what is pure and beautiful, but which are rarely found embodied in humanity. She was no titled sister of charity, but was silently felt and acknowledged to be one by the many outcast and destitute persons who received encouragement from her lips, and relief from her hands, and a higher and purer life from her influence, and by the few who were witnesses of her good works.”
We remember, as who does not, the noble faith of Mrs. Fry, who fought a like battle in the walls of a prison. Mrs. Fry was a woman of high education, of assured position, of practised eloquence, and supported by influential and important friends. But Sarah Martin was a poor lone woman, plain and little educated, endowed only by the magnificence of her faith and love with the energy of waging such a war.
TheEdinburgh Review, in an eloquent article on theLife and Poems of Sarah Martin, closes with the following words:
“It is the business of literature to make such a life stand out from the masses of ordinary existences with something of the distinctness with which a lofty building uprears itself in the confusion of a distant view. It should be made to attract all eyes, and to excite the hearts of all persons who think the welfare of their fellow mortals an object of interest or duty; it should be included in collections of biography, and chronicled in the high places of history; men should be taught to estimate it as that of one whose philanthropy has entitled her to renown, and children to associate the name of Sarah Martin with those of Howard, Buxton, Fry, the most benevolent of mankind.”