Sarah Martin lived in Caister, and went out to work in Yarmouth, a three-mile walk away, where she worked from eight in the morning until seven at night for 1s 3d (about 6p) a day; her free time was taken up in caring for her grandmother. Then when she was nineteen years old she heard a sermon preached in Yarmouth, and was inspired to do what good she could to her fellow-creatures. First, she taught little children in a Sunday school. Then she found out that the poor in the workhouse had no chaplain, and that the old and sick in the workhouse hospital needed comfort and friendship. She devoted one whole day a week to her visits there, a big sacrifice, for she lost a day’s earnings.

She laboured among the inmates of the workhouse for many years, and started a school there, and raised money to pay for a permanent building and a schoolmaster and schoolmistress for it.

She moved to Yarmouth, where she discovered that conditions in the gaol were appalling and that no chaplain or schoolmaster ever visited. In 1818 she went there for the first time to visit a woman prisoner. That was the start of 17 years of hard work on behalf of the prisoners. At first she visited every day to read the Bible to them, and to conduct services on Sundays. But the extraordinary influence Sarah Martin had on these unfortunate people, her power of winning the respect and affection of the roughest, was not gained only by spiritual ministrations, but by caring for their health and above all for their education and training.

She taught the women to sew baby clothes, and sold their work, and in this way raised capital to set up each woman in business when she left the gaol. In the same way she taught the men prisoners to make cloth caps and to carve spoons and needles from bone and to carve small articles in wood. While the prisoners worked, she would sit reading to them or talking with them.

Gradually she spent less and less time working as a dressmaker. Her grandmother had died, leaving her just enough money to live on, and charitable people in Yarmouth heard of her good works and made donations. She was now able to set up a school in the prison, where adults as well as children were taught to read and write, and she redoubled her efforts to support released prisoners by finding them work and lodgings.

She worked on behalf of the prisoners almost up to the day she died. A stained glass window was erected in her memory in Yarmouth parish church; but her greatest memorial must be that while philanthropists, economists and politicians were theorizing, by her practical hard work she actually accomplished the reforms they were puzzling over. She has earned the eternal gratitude of countless prisoners.

Comments (0)