Rachel Beer (''née'' Sassoon; 7 April 1858 – 29 April 1927) was an Indian-born British newspaper editor. She was editor-in-chief of ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' and ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
''.
Early life
Rachel Sassoon was born in
Bombay
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...
to
Sassoon David Sassoon
Sassoon David Sassoon (August 1832 – 24 June 1867) was a British Indian businessman, banker, and philanthropist.
Biography
Early life
Sassoon was born in August 1832 in Bombay, India.William D. Rubinstein, ''The Palgrave Dictionary of An ...
, of the
Baghdadi Jewish
The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian ...
Sassoon merchant family, one of the wealthiest families of the 19th century; her father was known as the "Rothschild of the East". As a young woman, she volunteered as a nurse in a hospital.
In 1887, she married the wealthy financier Frederick Arthur Beer, son of
Julius Beer
Julius Beer (1836–1880) was a German-born English businessman, banker and newspaper baron. He owned ''The Observer'' from 1870 to 1880.
Biography
Early life
Julius Beer was born in 1836 in Frankfurt, Germany.
Career
Beer made his fortun ...
(1836–1880), and converted to
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. Frederick, an Anglican Christian, was also from a family of converts. In the wake of her conversion, the family disowned her.
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.
Journalism career
Soon after she married Frederick, she 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. Two years later, she purchased ''The Sunday Times'' and became the editor of that newspaper as well. Though "not . . . a brilliant editor", she was known for her "occasional flair and business-like decisions".
Dreyfus affair
During her time as editor, ''The Observer'' achieved one of its greatest exclusives. A torn-up handwritten note, referred to throughout the affair as the ''bordereau'', was found by a French housekeeper in a wastebasket at the German Embassy in Paris. The ''bordereau'' described a minor French military secret, and had obviously been written by a spy in the French military.
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
French Army
Captain Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...
was found guilty of the crime on no reliable evidence, and imprisoned on
Devil's Island
The penal colony of Cayenne ( French: ''Bagne de Cayenne''), commonly known as Devil's Island (''Île du Diable''), was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and officially closed in 1953 in the Salvation Islands ...
. The actual culprit, Major
Count Esterhazy, was found not guilty on trial, but he was declared unfit for service, and fled to London. Beer knew that Esterhazy was in London because ''The Observers Paris correspondent had made a connection with him; she interviewed him twice, and he confessed to being the culprit: ''I wrote the bordereau''. She published the interviews in September 1898, reporting his confession and writing a
leader column accusing the French military of antisemitism and calling for a retrial for the innocent Dreyfus.
Despite this evidence, Dreyfus was found guilty again in a later trial, but following a public outcry was pardoned into house arrest in 1899, and finally exonerated on 12 July 1906, with his military commission restored and promoted to major.
Last years
Frederick died of syphilis in 1901, having passed it on to his wife. Her own behaviour grew increasingly erratic, culminating in a collapse. The following year she was
committed and her trustees sold both newspapers. Although she subsequently recovered, Beer required nursing care for the remainder of her life, spending her final years at Chancellor House in
Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the Weald, High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Roc ...
, where she died of the disease in 1927.
In her will she left a generous legacy to her nephew
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...
, enabling him to purchase
Heytesbury
Heytesbury is a village (formerly considered to be a town) and a civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village lies on the north bank of the Wylye, about southeast of the town of Warminster.
The civil parish includes most of the small neigh ...
House in Wiltshire, where he spent the rest of his life. In honour of her bequest, Siegfried hung an oil portrait of his aunt above the fireplace.
Her brother, Alfred, had been cut off by his family for marrying outside the Jewish faith; though Beer had also married a
gentile
Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym for ...
, in her case the action was forgivable because of her sex.
While Beer's husband Frederick was buried in his father's large mausoleum in
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...
in north London, her family intervened to prevent her burial in that bastion of Anglican religion. Instead she was due to be interred in the Sassoon family mausoleum in
Brighton
Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London.
Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...
, Sussex.
However, her grave is now located in the municipal cemetery at Tunbridge Wells, and a marker has been added to her headstone in recognition of her work as a journalist and editor, paid for by ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' and ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
''.
''Observer'' and ''Sunday Times'' pay for grave memorial to Fleet Street's first female editor Rachel Beer ''UK Press Gazette'' 9 July 2020
/ref>
References
Bibliography
*
*
*Negev, Eilat and Yehuda Koren (2011) ''The First Lady of Fleet Street: A Biography of Rachel Beer''. (London: JR Books).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beer, Rachel
1858 births
1927 deaths
British Jews
British newspaper editors
Converts to Anglicanism from Judaism
British India emigrants to the United Kingdom
Writers from Mumbai
People from Royal Tunbridge Wells
Rachel
Rachel () was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aun ...
The Observer people
The Sunday Times people
Journalists from Maharashtra
Women writers from Maharashtra
19th-century Indian journalists
20th-century Indian journalists
Indian women newspaper editors
19th-century Indian women writers
19th-century Indian writers
20th-century Indian women writers
Indian newspaper journalists
Jewish women writers
Jewish non-fiction writers
Indian women journalists
British women journalists
Indian people of Iraqi-Jewish descent
British people of Iraqi-Jewish descent
Deaths from syphilis