Leicester Chronicler - Clare Collet

The school bell rang out signalling the end of lessons for the day. Clara Collet, who had been teaching at Wyggeston Girls’ School for the previous six years, was looking forward to the evening ahead. William Morris was to give a lecture for the Leicester Secular Society to which Clara had been affiliated through her friendship with the Gimson family. This was despite her being a believer in God herself, albeit as a non-conformist Unitarian. Morris was to give a lecture entitled ‘Art and Socialism’. It was to prove an interesting talk despite his rather dry delivery as he read the paper with little expression.

	She was very fond of her life at Leicester. Having left London at the age of 18, she had been daunted at the prospect of teaching girls almost the same age as herself so far from her home. However, she soon settled down at the school which was so new it ‘was in a very unfinished state, especially the lower rooms, and we were constantly meeting the workmen in our journeys up and down’. The curriculum was ‘new’ too. It was to include mainly academic subjects and included callisthenics. At this time it was generally felt that ‘over brain power’ and too much strenuous activity was bad for a woman’s health and many of the parents objected in the beginning to this type of regime. Luckily very few of the new girls suffered as a result and the school soon became very popular both from the students’ and their parents’ perspective!

The Gimson family had become Clara’s closest friends in the area. Josiah Gimson was a successful local manufacturer of machinery. Despite being rich he had a well-developed social conscience and wished to extend co-operative activities, improve conditions in Leicester and achieve equality without revolution. He was an ardent supporter of the Secular Society. His growing family agreed with his views. Clara had become especially friendly, firstly with Sydney and later with Ernest, two of his sons, with whom she spent many evenings dancing and socialising at local events. She was to remain in touch with Ernest for much of her life.

The reputation of Morris as a great poet and decorative craftsman, not to mention politician (he had just been involved in the formation of the Socialist League), meant that the family were nervous about entertaining so great a man. However, they need not have worried. Sydney later wrote, ‘Ernest and I went to the station, and, two minutes after his train had come in, we were at home with him and captivated by his personality. His was a delightfully breezy, virile personality. In his conversations, if they touched on subjects which he felt deeply, came little bursts of temper which subsided as quickly as they arose and left no bad feeling behind them.’ He spent the night with the family and the two young men sat up until 2 am talking and drinking with Morris. Ernest was apprenticed at the time to a local architect and so he had an especial interest in Morris’s artistic ventures. The following year he wrote to Morris after, ‘much hesitation for fear of intrusion,’ asking for a letter of introduction to a London firm. He need not have worried as Morris wrote back by return of post sending three. As a result Ernest Gimson found a good position and later became arguably the best furniture maker in the Arts and Crafts tradition.	Wyggeston Girls' School in Regent Road, now Regent College, nearing completion in 1928. The building was designed by Symington and Prince. The school transferred to this site from its original base in Humberstone Gate.


Before he left Leicester, he pursued Clara Collet and despite being four years her junior, asked her hand in marriage. After a great deal of deliberation and careful thought, Clara turned him down. She decided that she did not love him and although he would make an excellent choice of husband in many ways she was not prepared to compromise love. ‘It is much better to live an old maid and get a little “honey” from the short real friendships I can have with men for whom I really care myself than to be bound for life to a man just because he thinks he cares for me.’ In any case, should she marry, she would have to give up her career and although she was by this time becoming dissatisfied with teaching, she certainly did not plan to abandon her plans for marriage.

	The following year in 1885, Clara decided to leave teaching, return to London and embark upon further education. This she did although, ‘the whole school [was] united in sorrow when she left and thirty of Miss Clara Collet’s girls drove with her to Longcliffe where they had tea’. At her final assembly she was unable to contain her tears and was full of trepidation at leaving the security of her work in Leicester especially as she was leaving ‘the pleasantest part of my life behind.’ Clara need not have worried too much. Despite a great deal of uncertainty for the next few years, she became the first woman to gain an MA in Political Economy and went on to work with Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Ramsay MacDonald, Charles Booth, William Beveridge and others, campaigning to improve working conditions in the both the ‘sweated trades’ and in the area of women’s work.

The Wyggeston Hospital Girls' School (and sometime City of Leicester Boys' School) in Humberstone Gate pictured here soon after its completion in Clara's time in 1878. It is now the headquarters of Age Concern Leicester.		The school crest (derived from the earlier crests of founder William Wyggeston and the Wyggeston Boys' School).

Clara Collet 1860-1948: An Educated Working Woman published by Woburn Press is also available. This provides full biographical details of Clara’s life with two chapters covering her time as a schoolmistress in Leicester . It includes an extensive bibliography of her work, including several papers written during this period. For further information on other aspects of Clara’s life see www.clara-collet.co.uk