Clara Collet 1860 – 1948
orginal drawing by Anne Sassoon
Social reformer, economist, writer.
10 September 1860 – 3 August 1948
A tribute to Clara Collet by Inderbir (Indy) Bhullar
‘I do not urge women to compete with men because they can do what men can, but because I believe they can do what men cannot.’
Clara Collet, Educated working women
Clara Collet was born in the middle of the nineteenth century and lived for almost ninety years. In the intervening decades, her life was spent both shaping and tracing the progress that women made towards equality, particularly in the fields of work and education.
Clara’s life began in Islington, where she was born in 1860 to a family of radical thinkers who counted Karl Marx as a family friend. In her youth she developed a close friendship with Karl’s daughter, Eleanor Marx, who herself lived a life of radical activism. The two later drifted apart before Eleanor’s untimely early death. From the age of thirteen, Clara was sent to the North London Collegiate School for Girls. Established by Francis Buss in 1850, it was widely considered to be one of the most liberal and pioneering schools in the country. It promoted the ‘radical’ notion that the education of girls was as important as that of boys. This educational foundation paved the way for Clara’s first job as a teacher at Leicester’s Wyggeston Girls’ School, a position she secured with inspiration from Francis Buss and on her recommendation.
While she was teaching, Clara continued her journey into higher education by attending the University of London (UCL). The College had become the first to allow women to take degrees in 1878, and Clara became one of the earliest women graduates in the country. Inspired by the opportunities that her education had provided as an undergraduate, Clara left Leicester and moved back down to London to begin a postgraduate course at UCL in Political Economy in 1885.
Her deepening understanding of economic matters proved invaluable when Charles Booth invited her to be part of his comprehensive study of London life and labour in the late 19th century. Clara’s meticulous work on women’s employment in the east end added depth and detail to Booth’s groundbreaking socio-economic analysis. Her chapters covered women’s work (in Volume I) and two more essays in Volume II on girls’ secondary education and tailoring. Many years later she would contribute to the follow-up survey to Booth’s original, providing information about domestic servants for the New Survey of London Life and Labour.
For the chapter on women’s work, Clara endorsed her opinions with statistics from books and her own observations and insights gained from her time living in London’s East End. Though her perspectives were of an outsider, and at times couched in terms of moral or character failures, her writing displayed an empathy with those women. She saw past their proclivity for drink or other forms of ‘bad behaviour’ an instead focused on their solidarity in challenging times.
‘They are rough, boisterous, outspoken, warmhearted, honest working girls. Their standard of morality is very low, so low that to many they may seem to have none at all: and yet the very tolerance of evil that is shown by the girls who so willingly subscribe for a companion who has “got into trouble” may be one reason why these girls have such a repugnance to the worst forms of immorality.’
(Pg 475, Women’s Work, Booth Vol 1)
Invitations for her investigative skills came from several places. As a woman she was often in a clear minority in many of the positions she took: whether as part of Royal Commissions (she was among the first women to be appointed to a Royal Commission as an assistant commissioner) or working for the Civil Service. However, many professional roles were only just beginning to let women contribute to fields that had been that had been previously denied. Women entering theses professions were often faced with discrimination, suspicion and mistreatment.
A 1914 Daily Telegraph article highlighted this bias. The ‘Civil Service Correspondent’ reported on the ongoing MacDonnell Commission on the Civil Service, which had been formed in 1912 and was looking into a number of issues surrounding Civil Service employment, including the employment of women. The Correspondent, worried by the prospect of women diluting the value of the work done by the men, wrote
‘we are entitled to ask Lord Haldane, [who had appeared before the Commission advocating for equal pay] does he think her work in a government office would be the same value as a man’s? …her presence would be a source of embarrassment and weakness to the Administration’
Clara had been involved in government work for over twenty years by the time the article was published, yet for many her presence within such an institution was still felt to be a ‘weakness’. Thankfully many of her peers saw her differently and she was invited to be a member of the Royal Statistical Society and Royal Economic Society some years later.
The British women’s suffrage journal The Common Cause included a rebuke of the Telegraph’s article, mentioning Clara by name, alongside Adelaide Anderson, Constance Smith, Mona Wilson, and Lucy Deane-Streatfield as examples of the new vanguard of feminists who were taking their place in the professions as committed, capable public servants.
The Common Cause was the magazine of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies [NUWSS] and associated with the non-militant wing of the Votes for Women campaign. Clara was a believer in women’s suffrage and donated money to the NUWSS’ funds and campaigns. She preferred to support them over their militant sisters involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union. As well as supporting and advancing the cause of women’s suffrage and their rights to professional employment, Clara also maintained the importance of fair pay for the millions of working women who were often ignored by publications and policymakers. She was appointed to the Board of Trade (which would later become the Ministry for Labour) in 1893 and spent years evidencing the primary importance that decent pay and conditions had on working people’s lives. She supported women organising themselves into trade unions as she was aware of how the unions could protect and improve working conditions and pay. Another key channel for improving such conditions was through legislation.
The Liberal Government of 1906–1914 is known for passing several pieces of social legislation which formed the foundation for what we now term the ‘welfare state’. Hidden among these reforms was the 1909 Trade Boards Act. These trade boards provided oversight of several industries where exploitation and underpayment was rife and helped establish a minimum wage in those industries. Clara’s diligent and influential work, as part of the Board of Trade, helped provide the basis that underpinned the legislation. She also sat on Trade Boards for many years, even into retirement, ensuring employers’ responsibilities to their employees were met.
Clara lived a life of steady purpose. She was not a political radical but the positions and ambitions she strived for were radical for a woman of her time. Her biographer, Deborah McDonald summarises the changes that occurred during her life:
‘When she had been born, women were not allowed to take a university degree or enter the Civil Service. A husband had a legal right to beat his wife with a stick and keep any money that she earnt. By the time Clara died, women were able to enter many professions, had a legal right to their own money and property could vote, and could take their husbands to court should they beat them.’
Clara, alongside generations of other women, played her part in seeing these changes come to fruition.
Inderbir Bhullar is Curator for Economics and Social Policy, LSE Library.
MINI BIOGRAPHY
Education
Attended North London Collegiate School.
Took Greek and applied mathematics lessons privately while working as assistant mistress at a girls’ school in Leicester.
Higher education at University College London (UCL).
Some Key Achievements and Interests
1880 Graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, one of the first women graduates from the University of London.
1885 Enrolled for an MA in Moral and Political Philosophy at UCL. While studying at UCL also took the Teacher’s Diploma.
1886 She and Henry Higgs jointly awarded the Joseph Hume Scholarship in Political Economy.
1887 Awarded an MA becoming possibly the first woman at a British university to be awarded one.
1890 Attended a meeting held at UCL to found the British Economic Association.
1890 Involved in the formation of the Economic Club at UCL at a meeting held at UCL. The Economic Journal was also established at the meeting and to which Collet contributed.
Worked for Charles Booth until 1892 writing chapters for his work ‘Life and Labour of the People of London’ (1889-1891) having interviewed prostitutes and women from the sweated trades in East London. Later contributed to Hubert Llewellyn Smith’s New Survey of London Life and Labour updating Booth’s Survey.
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).
1893 Secured a permanent post as Senior Investigator for Women’s Industries at the Labour Department of the Board of Trade.
1894 Elected to Fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society, later serving on its Council.
1896 The first woman to be awarded a UCL Fellowship.
1902 Delivered a series of lectures on “economic questions requiring medical answers”, the first woman to lecture in the economics department at UCL.
1920 Retired from the civil service and became an active member of the Royal Economic Society and the Royal Statistical Society.
Issues
As a woman had to fight to access education in the field of her choice, get experience in statistical research and then employment.
Connection to Bloomsbury
UCL
1885 Lived in College Hall on Gordon Square, Bloomsbury.*
Female networks include
Colleagues around the country
Writing/Publications include
Published reports and articles on the economic position of women.
1894 wrote report on the Statistics of Employment of Women and Girls for the Labour Department.
1902 The Economic Position of Educated Working Women
1911 Women in Industry
1930 Changes in Wages and Conditions of Domestic Servants in private Families and Institutions in the County of London; Collet & Daphne Sanger
Further reading:
Clara Collet and Women’s Work (victorianweb.org)
women students at UCL in early 1880s.pdf
letters-and-transcripts-v4.pdf Rights for Women: London’s Pioneers in their Own Words
report on conditions of barmaids etc Orme etc.pdf
- Listen/read about the founding of College Hall: College Hall and Chenies Street Chambers – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)