Clara Grant and Farthing Bundles
- Jan 24
- 6 min read
I came across the story of Clara Grant and her charitable efforts in the poverty stricken communities of London’s East End by accident. I was researching something else and her name cropped up. As tends to happen, I fell down a research rabbit hole wanting to find out more about her. I very quickly found her empathy and passion for helping poor children and their families moving. I hope that you will enjoy learning about her as much as I did.
Clara Grant was born in 1867 near Warminster in Wiltshire as the second of at least nine children. Her parents were Thomas and Maria Grant. Thomas was a plumber and painter. From an early age, Clara was always well read, helping to broad her young mind. In 1875, the family moved to Frome in Somerset. Even back then, Clara was adamant that she would move to London to pursue a teaching career.
By the age of thirteen, Clara had become a pupil teacher, a pupil helping to teach younger children, meaning that if they proved their ability, they could then go on to gain trained teacher status. Clara herself passed with a first in her teacher scholarship exam in 1885. By 1888, she was the head teacher of a church school in Wiltshire. She was now nearly at her dream of becoming a teacher in London, but obviously needed to gain on the job training before she could do that. At some point, it was thought that Clara would instead use her teaching skills in Africa with the Universities Mission in Central Africa. However, this changed and Clara’s calling did indeed send her to London, but actually the poverty stricken East End.
In 1890, she became the head teacher of a school in Hoxton in the East End. At the time, Hoxton had a reputation for filth and crime. However, Clara enjoyed her time there dealing with a type of environment she hadn’t been exposed to before. Whilst in this role, she also took university extension courses and attended lectures at Gresham College to expand her knowledge.
For a short time in 1893, Clara taught at a board school, which was a school run by a school board. Clara didn’t suit the school as she found the punishment excessive and didn’t agree that learning by rote was the best way for children to learn. Clara’s teaching style was very progressive for the time. She believed in the fairly new concept of ‘play theory’, where play and activities were a necessary part of a child’s education. In fact, she would later go on to write teacher manuals to explain to teachers how to create toys and games for children in the classroom, especially in resource strapped schools. With a very different outlook to the board school, it was agreed that she was unsuited for the school and was transferred to a school in Wapping, another area of the East End.
The East End was a place of severe poverty. The children were the poorest in London and the area, and those who lived there, were seen as filthy, crime-ridden and immoral, amongst other things. In reality, most of the workers in the East End were casual labourers, working in industries, like the docks, where people were hired on the day. It’s not that they were unwilling to work, it just exacerbated unemployment. Unlike others, Clara treated those she interacted with in the East End with the same dignity and respect that she would treat anyone else.
Having witnessed that the families of the children she was teaching were unable to offer toys or decent clothing, Clara knew that something socially had to change to help them. This had to be practical help and empowering parent’s about their own abilities and responsibilities for their families. To do this, charitable causes and work opportunities would be needed. Her Christian faith was a huge influence on her in this. Despite being a Church of England attender, she always advocated for religious toleration, believing that arguing over differing beliefs within the Christian faith was overtaking helping those in need.
Clara’s charitable efforts started in 1896 when she sent out her Christmas cards. She asked her friends and acquaintances to donate items that would help the families she knew in the East End. To do this, she included a ‘wants list’ of most needed items, such as clothes or discarded household items.Another influence was Clara’s association with Toynebee Hall. Toynebee Hall was established as a social settlement in 1884 by Samuel Augustus Barnett and his wife, Henrietta. It got graduates from universities, seen as future government leaders and officials, to really see and understand the lives of those in poverty. The aim was to offer practical help, with the intension of creating future solutions to poverty by informing future government policy.
By 1900, Clara became the head teacher of a school in Bow Common, Poplar, also in the East End. It is during her tenure there that her charitable efforts had the most long lasting impact. Clara was living at Fern Street, close to the school. Out of her home she started her own settlement, before expanding to surrounding houses. The settlement aimed to provide work for locals, as well as provide a library, adult classes, clothing and other second hand goods, and health care.
The school also provided practical help for pupils and their families. It was the first school in London to have a nurse, who not only looked after the health of pupils, but helped with dental hygiene, and made monthly visits to families with newborn babies. Another pioneering aspect of the school was breakfast clubs. In return for giving breakfast to the children, parents were asked to contribute a penny a week. If they couldn’t, then practical help like washing table cloths was a way to contribute instead. In 1906, the School Meals Act was passed, meaning that feeding children in school became the responsibility of local councils, but Clara obviously tried her best to do that before then
Clara’s local nickname was the ‘farthing bundle woman’, which made her famous right across London. What exactly was a farthing bundle? It was a bundle that included donated items such as small toys (or even items like blocks of wood made into toys), chalks or pencils, given out to small children, in exchange for a farthing, which was worth a quarter of a penny. Understandably, they were incredibly popular. A wooden arch was used to measure the height of the children trying to get a bundle, in an attempt to say who was eligible. It said “enter all ye children small, none can come who are too tall”. Donors to the bundles even included Queen Mary, wife of George V, and grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.
Clara retired from teaching in 1927, but still carried on her charity work. In the 1930s, she wrote her memoirs, reflecting on her charity work, faith and social conscience. She wrote two, but one of them was fittingly entitled ‘Farthing Bundles’. Clara went on to receive an OBE, given to her by George VI, Queen Mary’s son and the father of Queen Elizabeth, in 1949. This acknowledgement of her work came not long before she died at her home in Fern Street on 10th October 1949. Clara’s legacy still lives on as the Fern Street Settlement is still in existence, now in the form of a community centre, as does her school, now called Clara Grant Primary School. Her farthing bundles did continue into the 1980s, but have been fondly remembered, just as much as her efforts that are still in existence.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Clara Ellen Grant’, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/70411
Ibid
East End Women’s Museum, ‘Clara Grant – The Bundle Woman of Bow’, https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2022/5/30/clara-grant-the-bundle-woman-of-bow
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Clara Ellen Grant’
Ibid
East End Women’s Museum, ‘Clara Grant – The Bundle Woman of Bow’
Children and Food: A History, ’Clara Grant and the Hungry Children of Bow, London’, https://www.children-and-food-history.org.uk/blog/1401982_clara-grant-1867-1949-and-the-hungry-children-of-bow-london
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Clara Ellen Grant’
Ibid
Ibid
Britannica, ‘Toynbee Hall’, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Toynbee-Hall
Kevin A. Morrison (ed), Encyclopaedia of London’s East End (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2023), p. 82
Rachel Kolsky, Women’s London: a Tour Guide to Great Lives (Grantham: IMM Lifestyle Books, 2018)
Kevin A. Morrison (ed), Encyclopaedia of London’s East End, p. 82
Children and Food: A History, ’Clara Grant and the Hungry Children of Bow, London’
Ibid
Rachel Kolsky, Women’s London: a Tour Guide to Great Lives
Ibid
Ibid; Kevin A. Morrison (ed), Encyclopaedia of London’s East End, p. 82
Comments