Clara Lucas Balfour (1808–1878)

Clara Lucas Liddell was born in New Forest, England. In 1827, she married James Balfour, a civil servant, with whom she resided at Chelsea in London. The couple had no children. Mrs. Balfour become closely associated with the temperance reform movement, and she devoted her life to the fight against alcohol. She became a lecturer at the Greenwich Literary Institution where she lectured for over three decades (1841–1877). In 1877, she was elected president of the British Women’s Temperance League. She contributed articles to such periodicals as The Family Visitor and The British Workman, and her books included Morning Dew Drops (1853), the preface of which was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.