Fry explains reading to prisoners to Committee of House of Commons on the Prisons of the Metropolis, 27 Feb 1818: 'our habit is constantly to read the Scriptures to them twice a day; many of them are taught, and some of them have been enabled to read a little themselves; it has an astonishing effect: I never saw the Scriptures received in the same way, and to many of them they have been entirely new, both the great system of religion and of morality contained in them; and it has been very satisfactory to observe the effect on their minds; when I have sometimes gone and said it was my intention to read, they would flock upstairs after me, as if it were a great pleasure, I had to afford them'