The 19th century women's prison reformer Elizabeth Fry is to replace the locomotive pioneer George Stephenson on a new £5 note to be introduced in the spring.
The Quaker philanthropist, who was known during her lifetime as the "angel of the prisons", will be the second woman to appear on a British bank in recent years. The Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale appeared on the £10 note.
Details of the Fry note have not yet been released but the Bank of England said it would include a portrait of the campaigner and a picture "appropriate to her achievements". The move follows the issue of a new £10 note depicting Charles Darwin in November 2000 and a revised £20 note featuring Sir Edward Elgar in June 1999.
Fry, who lived between 1780 and 1845, earned a reputation as one of the 19th century's greatest reformers with her crusade to improve the state of women's jails in Europe. She resolved to take action after seeing the squalid conditions in the women's section of Newgate Prison in London during a visit in 1813. As a mother to 11 children, however, Fry did not have the time and energy to devote herself to the welfare of the female prisoners until Christmas 1816.
After making her mark as a protester, she was invited to the House of Commons to advise MPs on change, and she also lent her expertise to the prison authorities of mainland Europe.
Her first innovation was the establishment of a school for the children of the prisoners. She and her collaborators then introduced a system of classification of the prisoners, prison dress, constant supervision by a matron and monitors who were chosen from among the prisoners, religious and elementary education, and paid employment. A statue of her is in the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, and Elizabeth Fry societies exist across the world.
The Fry note, featuring the Queen on the other side, will be the same size and colour as the existing £5 note.
The Bank said the old and new notes would circulate alongside one another while the old one was slowly withdrawn.