{{short description|English prison reformer}} {{Use British English|date=June 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2017}} {{Infobox scholar | image = Margery Fry by her brother Roger Fry (died over 70 years ago).jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = As principal (by her brother Roger Fry) | other_names = | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1874|3|11}} | birth_place = London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1958|4|21|1874|3|11}} | death_place = | era = | region = | school_tradition = Somerville College, Oxford | main_interests = | notable_ideas = Penal reformer | major_works = | influences = | influenced = | honorific_suffix = {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|JP}} |birth_name=Sara Margery Fry}} '''Sara Margery Fry''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|JP}} (11 March 1874 – 21 April 1958) was a British prison reformer as well as one of the first women to become a magistrate. She was the secretary of the Howard League for Penal Reform and the principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
==Early life== Fry was born in London in 1874. She was the child of Quakers Sir Edward Fry, a judge, and his wife, Mariabella Hodgkin (1833–1930). Her siblings included Joan Mary Fry, the social reformer, Roger Fry of the Bloomsbury Group, the biographer and bryologist Agnes Fry and pacifist Anna Ruth Fry. She was home schooled until she was seventeen when she attended Miss Lawrence's school at Brighton before proceeding to study maths at Somerville College, Oxford in 1894. She went home after she graduated but returned to Somerville to become their librarian.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/84/Margery-Fry|title=Margery Fry|website=www.quakersintheworld.org|language=en-US|access-date=2018-06-19}}</ref>
In 1904, she left Somerville and became Warden of University House, the new women's residence at the University of Birmingham, at an annual salary of £60. It was there that Fry met educationist and fellow relief worker Marjorie Rackstraw, who would become her lifelong friend.<ref>{{Cite ODNB|id=52396|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-52396|title=Rackstraw, Marjorie (1888–1981), educationist and social worker|access-date=2019-03-09}}</ref>
In 1913 her uncle Joseph Storrs Fry died and left her sufficient money that she left her position at Birmingham in the following year. After 1915, she helped organise Quaker relief efforts in the Marne war area, and then elsewhere in France.<ref name=":0" />
==Belief in penal reform== After the First World War, she lived with her brother Roger and began the work on prison reform in which she was to be involved until the end of her life. In 1918, she became secretary of the Penal Reform League, which merged with the Howard Association in 1921 to form the Howard League for Penal Reform; she was secretary of the combined organisation until 1926.
In 1921 she was appointed a magistrate, one of the first women magistrates in Britain. In 1922 she was appointed education advisor to Holloway Prison (a prison for women in London). Margery Fry was Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform from its foundation in 1921 until 1926. She served as Chair of the league's Council from 1926 to 1929.<ref name=":0" />
She also became concerned with compensation for victims of crimes which resulted in an article, "Justice for Victims", in the Observer in 1957 and republished as part of a round table article in the Journal of Public Law.<ref name="mueller">{{Cite journal| volume = 50| pages = 213–221| last = Mueller| first = Gerhard| title = Compensation for Victims of Crime: Thought before Action| journal = Minnesota Law Review| date = 1965-01-01}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news| pages = 8| last = Fry| first = Margery| title = Justice for Victims| work = The Observer| location = London| date = 1957-07-07}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 8| issue = 1| pages = 191–253| last = Fry| first = Margery| title = Justice for Victims Compensation for Victims of Criminal Violence: A Round Table| journal = Journal of Public Law| access-date = 2024-03-09| date = 1959| url = https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/emlj8&i=195}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1080/20517483.2017.1427098| issn = 2051-7483| volume = 5| issue = 2| pages = 251–263| last = Zhao| first = Guoling| title = Justice and protection of rights for victims of crime| journal = Peking University Law Journal| date = 2017-07-03| url = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20517483.2017.1427098| url-access = subscription}}</ref> Gerhard Mueller in 1965 wrote "Margery Fry is at the root of all current proposals for victim compensation".<ref name="mueller"/>{{rp|216}}
==Academic career== Fry studied mathematics at Somerville College, Oxford. She was Librarian at Somerville (1899–1904). In 1904, she became Warden of the women's residence at the University of Birmingham.
From 1926 to 1930, she was Principal of Somerville College.<ref>{{cite web |title=Somerville College Pages 343-347 A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3, the University of Oxford. |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol3/pp343-347 |website=British History Online |publisher=Victoria County History, 1954 |access-date=29 November 2022}}</ref> Her appointment was hailed as ''"[combining] intellectual distinction, a fine eloquence, and academic experience with the force of character and sympathy which the post demands."''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3348/all/1/Somerville%27s_Jubilee.aspx |access-date=10 September 2012 |url-status=dead |title=Somerville's Jubilee|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120923141001/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3348/all/1/Somerville%27s_Jubilee.aspx |archive-date=23 September 2012 }}</ref> The Graduate (Middle Common Room, or ''MCR'') accommodation building at Somerville College is called 'Margery Fry House' in her honour.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3350/all/1/A_full_College_of_the_University.aspx |access-date=10 September 2012 |url-status=dead|title=A full College of the University |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120923141008/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3350/all/1/A_full_College_of_the_University.aspx |archive-date=23 September 2012 }}</ref>
Somerville College Library holds a collection of her correspondence and papers.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/library-it/special-collections/special-collections/|website=some.ox.ac.uk|title=Special Collections|access-date=28 August 2018}}</ref>
==Other==
In 1919, she was appointed to the newly founded University Grants Committee on which she served until 1948.
She was also a governor of the BBC from 1937 to 1938 and a participant in The Brains Trust series starting in 1942.<ref name="KMurphy">{{Cite book|title=Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC|last=Murphy|first=Kate|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2016|isbn=978-1-137-49172-5|location=London|doi=10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2|section=2.2 BBC Hierarchies|page=25}}</ref> The Fry Housing Trust was established in 1959, in memory of Margery Fry. In 1990, the Margery Fry Award was established in her honour.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.howardleague.org/margeryfryaward/ |title=home – The Howard League for Penal Reform |publisher=Howard League |access-date=7 March 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303183505/http://www.howardleague.org/margeryfryaward/ |archive-date=3 March 2016 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
==Bibliography== *''Margery Fry: The Essential Amateur'' by Enid Huws Jones, Oxford University Press. 1966. *"Margery Fry", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''. Written by Thomas L. Hodgkin, rev. Mark Pottle. {{doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/33286}} *''The Politics of Penal Reform: Margery Fry and the Howard League'' (2017) by Ann Logan <ref>Routledge SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories</ref>
==External links== * [http://www.fryha.org.uk Fry Housing Trust website] * [http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3348/all/1/Somerville%27s_Jubilee.aspx The official history of Fry's career on the Somerville College website] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120923141001/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3348/all/1/Somerville%27s_Jubilee.aspx |date=23 September 2012 }} * [https://openlibrary.org/b/OL20394191M/Margery_Fry_1874-1958 Margery Fry, 1874–1958: a lecture given on Friday 5 July 1974], at the University of Birmingham to celebratethe centenary of the birth of Margery Fry, by Janet Vaughan. Published in 1974, Margery Fry Memorial Trust (Birmingham). * [https://web.archive.org/web/20120723095422/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/4055/all/1/Special_collections.aspx Fry's correspondence and papers are now held by Somerville College library]
{{S-start}} {{succession box |title=Principal<br>Somerville College, Oxford |years = 1926–1930 |before=Emily Penrose |after=Helen Darbishire }} {{Succession box |title=Secretary<br>Howard League for Penal Reform |years = 1921-1926 |before= First holder |after=Cicely Craven }} {{S-end}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fry, Margery}} Category:1874 births Category:1958 deaths Category:Academics from London Margery Category:People educated at Roedean School, East Sussex Category:British activists Category:English women activists Category:English Quakers Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford Category:Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Category:Principals of Somerville College, Oxford Category:English women judges Category:British prison reformers Category:English reformers Category:People associated with the University of Birmingham Category:BBC governors Category:English justices of the peace Category:20th-century Quakers