 It is said that around this time Joseph John Gurney, a prominent Quaker Englishman (considered a 'minister', in the Quaker sense of the term), and brother of Elizabeth Fry, herself a noted advocate of social and prison reform, offered the sum of 500 pounds to the Religious Society of Friends for the establishment of a school there, if they could raise a similar amount.It is not immediately clear when the building that eventually became the West Lake Boarding School (and still stands today as a private residence) was actually erected.Mr.