ABSTRACT
In the 1920s Margery Fry made important contributions to British criminology. Margery launched the Howard Journal, researched and wrote some of the Howard League's early pamphlets, organized celebrations of penal reform history, and promoted the academic criminology lectures. Criminology was in its infancy in England, neither recognized as an academic discipline nor taught in a systematic way. Margery's interest in criminology also encompassed an appreciation of the importance of penal reform history. Margery was not only an innovator in British criminology herself but also a promoter of the subject's adoption as an academic pursuit. Margery contributions to criminology in the 1920s included launching – and then writing for – the Howard Journal, the preparation and publication of pamphlets that drew on statistical and comparative criminological investigation, the cultivation of international penological contacts, and a demanding schedule of proselytizing for reform. By the 1940s, then, criminology was starting to emerge as a distinct academic discipline in Britain.
