Clara Ellen GrantOBE, 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. She had a Christian upbringing and as a young woman had an independent streak, deciding to further her education in order to become a teacher in London, to which aim in 1886 she undertook training at Salisbury Diocesan Training College.
Career
Her first teaching job was at a church school in her home village in 1888. Apart from a brief and unfulfilling period teaching at a boarding school, Grant dedicated her life to working with the poorest children in one of the most deprived areas of London. In 1900 she was appointed headmistress of All Hallows School in Bow, one of five small schools in the area, all of which were made of tin. In 1905 Devons Road Infants' School in Bromley-by-Bow, a new purpose-built school opened to accommodate all the children from the tin schools, with Grant again as headmistress.
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 but from 1911 in a series of converted terraced cottages to feed and clothe the children of the poor of the East End of London. The Settlement fostered links to the Voluntary Health Visiting Association, which sent a staff member and a nurse once a month for one year to visit each baby born to a family with a child at Devons Road Infants School. Inspired by the work of the Anglican priest and social reformer Samuel Barnett of Toynbee Hall among the poor of Whitechapel and Spitalfields, Grant organised hot breakfasts for her young pupils, buying porridge, milk, bread and butter from her own pocket. In addition she supplied her pupils with clothing and boots. Realising that children needed to be able to play 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. The toys in each bundle were made from recycled materials and were distributed to poor children. In this way a piece of firewood could be fashioned into a simple doll by wrapping it in newspaper; while a pair of worn stockings stuffed and tied with string could be used as cricket balls. 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'. The 'farthing bundles' operated throughout World War I, the Depression of the 1930s, World War II and into the 1960s, some years after Grant's death. In 1964 a boy might have found in his bundle a comic, a cardboard aeroplane, a pencil and notebook, chalks, marbles in a matchbox, a ball and a toy car – all for ½d, farthings having been out of circulation since 1961. Grant's The Teacher's Book of Toy Making was published in 1917. 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 and Farthing Bundles.
Honours
In 1949, aged 81, Grant was awarded an OBE for her services to education. She later wrote, "To me has fallen the happy task of sharing gifts among our people. There is nothing so embarrassing as wearing as an ill-fitting halo – but a life one would not change for any other."
Death
Clara Grant died in 1949, aged 82, and was buried in Tower Hamlets Cemetery, 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 2014 Grant was recognised by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with a purple People's Plaque on the wall outside the Settlement in Fern Street, the work of which continues to this day.
