Rachel Beer

Rachel Beer (1858–1927) was an Indian-born British newspaper editor. She was editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times.

Biography

Rachel Sassoon was born in Bombay to Sassoon David Sassoon, of the Iraqi Sassoon family, one of the wealthiest families of the 19th century. As a young woman, she volunteered as a nurse in a hospital. She married the wealthy financier Frederick Arthur Beer in 1887 and converted to Christianity. Frederick, an Anglican Christian, was also from a family of converts. In the wake of her conversion, the family disowned her.^[1] The Beers had their roots as a banking family in the Frankfurt ghetto. In the UK they were financiers whose investments included ownership of newspapers.^[2]

Frederick's death in 1903 triggered a breakdown in Rachel, with her erratic behavior culminating in a collapse. The following year she was committed and her trustees sold both newspapers. Although Rachel subsequently recovered, she required nursing care for the remainder of her life. Rachel spent her final years at Chancellor House in Tunbridge Wells, where she died in 1927.

Though Rachel's husband Frederick was buried in his father's enormous mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery in London, Rachel's family intervened to prevent her burial in that bastion of Anglican religion. Instead she was interred in the Sassoon family mausoleum in Brighton. Among her relatives was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was her nephew. Her brother, Alfred, had been cut off by his family for marrying outside the Jewish faith; though Rachel had also married a gentile, in her case the action was forgiveable because of her sex. In her will she left a generous legacy to Siegfried, enabling him to purchase Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, where he spent the rest of his life. In honour of her bequest, Siegfried hung an oil portrait of his aunt over the fireplace.

Journalism career

Soon after her marriage to Frederick, Rachel began contributing articles to The Observer, which the Beer family then owned. In 1891, she took over as editor, becoming the first female editor of a national newspaper in the process.^[3] Two years later, she purchased the Sunday Times and became the editor of that newspaper as well. Though "not . . . a brilliant editor"^[4], she was known for her "occasional flair and business-like decisions".^[5]

It was during her time as editor that The Observer achieved one of its greatest exclusives: the admission by Count Esterhazy that he had forged the letters that condemned innocent Jewish officer Captain Dreyfus to Devil's Island. The story provoked an international outcry and led to the release and pardon of Dreyfus and court martial of Esterhazy.

References

Bibliography

• Jackson, Stanley (1989). The Sassoons: Portrait of a Dynasty. William Heinemann. ISBN 0434370568. 
• Curney, Vanessa (2004). ""Beer [née Sassoon], Rachel". In Matthew, Colin, and Brian Harrison (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 4. Oxford University Press. pp. 816–817. 
• Negev, Eilat and Yehuda Koren (2011) The First Lady of Fleet Street: A Biography of Rachel Beer. (London: JR Books). ISBN 978-1906779191