Clara Grant

[5] Apart from a brief and unfulfilling period teaching at a boarding school in 1893, from 1894 to 1900 Grant dedicated her life to working with the poorest children in Wapping, then one of the most deprived areas of London.

[1] In 1896, Grant added to her Christmas card a short 'wants list' through which she hoped for the donation of old clothes and unwanted household goods for her pupils' families.

In 1907 she set up the Fern Street Settlement, initially in her own home[1] 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.

[5] 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 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.

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".

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 (half an old penny), farthings having been out of circulation since 1961.

[6] 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,[6] the work of which continues to this day.

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.