Clara Collet

She is also noted for the collection of statistical and descriptive evidence on the life of working women and poor people in London and elsewhere in England.

In October 1885 Collet moved to College Hall, on Gordon Square, and started to study for a master's degree in Moral and Political Philosophy, which included psychology and economics.

In 1887 Alice Stopford Green started the investigation on women's work and wages, but in November 1888 she left Booth's project.

While working for Booth she coached girls and occasionally stood in for Henry Higgs to give lectures on economics at Toynbee Hall.

[9] Collet joined the Civil Service and worked with the Board of Trade to introduce many reforms, including the introduction of the Old Age Pension and labour exchanges (employment bureaux).

During these years she worked with well-known politicians such as David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, William Beveridge and Winston Churchill.

[10][11] With the support of Charles Booth she initially joined the civil service as Assistant Commissioner for the Royal Commission on Labour.

[13] Collet was a friend of George Gissing during the last ten years of his life (they first met in July 1893),[14] and she offered to act as guardian to his two sons when it became clear his second wife, Edith, would find it hard to cope financially after his death.