Clara Ellen Grant

Clara Ellen Grant OBE (21 June 1867 – 10 October 1949), known as 'The Farthing Bundle Woman of Bow', was an educator, a pioneer in London of infant children's education, and a social reformer. She founded in 1907 the Fern Street Settlement, set up to feed and clothe poor and hungry children in the East End of London.

Early life Clara Grant was born in the village of Chapmanslade in Wiltshire in 1867, one of nine children born to Maria and Thomas Grant, a painter and glazier. Her home was one of books as both her parents were well-read, while her father was a self-taught musician and the organist at the local church. Grant described herself as 'the only plain one of a family of good-looking sisters' However, she developed other skills including intelligence, independence, diplomacy and a strong social conscience.

Career Her first teaching job was as headmistress in a church school in her home village in 1888. From late 1890 to 1893 Grant achieved her ambition of teaching in London when she was the head of a small school in Hoxton, then a deprived area. During this period she advanced her own education through a series of university extension courses and lectures at Gresham College.

Charitable work

A disciple of the German educator Friedrich Fröbel who originated the kindergarten, Grant came to believe that children could not be taught effectively if they were cold, hungry and unhappy. In 1907 she set up the Fern Street Settlement, initially in her own home in 1913 she conceived the idea of the 'Farthing Bundle' of toys costing a farthing, a scheme that was to last for more than fifty years. Queen Mary visited the Settlement after which she often sent Grant greetings cards to be reused in the 'bundles'.

Demand for the 'farthing bundles' became so great that Grant decided she could only assist her smaller charges, and as she did not have time to inquire of their age or anything about them she devised a wooden arch 4 feet 4½ inches high on which was engraved the phrase "Enter Now Ye Children Small; None Can Come Who Are Too Tall". The children had to pass through this arch without stooping before they could receive a bundle. On average 500 children would begin queuing at 6 am to walk through the arch. The children paid a farthing per bundle which Grant intended to give the children the dignity of feeling that they were not receiving charity but had actually paid for their gift. It also gave them the right to complain if they felt their bundle was inadequate. So that taller children would not be left out, Grant later set up a 'penny shop'. while her book The Teacher's Book of Drawing Chats: A Series of Chats for Babies Accompanied by Drawings was published by Evans Brothers of London shortly after. She later wrote two autobiographical and self-published works to raise money for her educational and philanthropic work: From 'Me' to 'We': Forty Years on Bow Common (1930) and Farthing Bundles (1930). near to her Fern Street Settlement. She never married.

Legacy She is commemorated by the Clara Grant Primary School – renamed from the Devons School in 1993 – and Clara Grant House in Mellish Street on the Isle of Dogs.

In recent years Grant has been criticised for failing to advocate birth control as a means of alleviating poverty and for failing to recognise the social causes of poverty. Her claim that she did not want to get involved in the contraception issue gives more the impression of a Victorian spinster's reluctance to discuss such matters than a failure to understand the problem. Certainly, she clearly understood the connection between poverty and its social causes as much of her writing comments on society's responsibility towards its poorer members in the matters of health, housing and recreation.