Clara E. Collet

Clara Elizabeth Collet (10 September 1860 – 3 August 1948) was a British economist and civil servant. She was one of the first women graduates from the University of London and was pivotal in many reforms which greatly improved working conditions and pay for women during the early part of the twentieth century. 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.

Education

Her Unitarian father, Collet Dobson Collet, sent her to the North London Collegiate School close to where she lived, which was one of the most liberated schools for girls at that time. When finishing her education at the Collegiate School in 1878, she was recommended by the founder of the school, Frances Buss, to work as assistant mistress at the newly founded Wyggeston Girls' School in Leicester, later to become Regent College. Her salary was £80 and she got herself coached by masters from the boy's grammar school in Greek and applied mathematics.

Collet also enrolled at University College London and in 1880 graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, making her one of the first women graduates from the University of London. 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. While studying at University College London she took the Teacher's Diploma. In 1886 she and Henry Higgs were jointly awarded the Joseph Hume Scholarship in Political Economy. Collet was awarded an M.A. in 1887.