English Quaker philanthropist. From 1813 she began to visit and teach the women in Newgate Prison in London who lived with their children in terrible conditions. She formed an association for the improvement of conditions for female prisoners in 1817, and worked with her brother, Joseph Gurney (1788–1847), on an 1819 report on prison reform. She was a pioneer for higher nursing standards and the education of working women. Her work extended to other prisons, and for 25 years she visited every ship bound with women convicts for Australia, arranging instruction and activity. Her unflagging devotion, magnetic personality, reports to the government, and published pamphlets enlisted public sympathy and led to official enquiry and reform. Her principal demands were for segregation by sex and criminal classification, female supervision for women, and the provision of education and occupation. Between 1838 and 1842 she carried her work to European prisons in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, …