Rachel Sassoon Beer was an Indian-born British newspaper editors
Background
Rachel Sassoon was born in Bombay to Sassoon David Sassoon, of the Iraqi Sassoon family, one of the wealthiest families of the 19th century. Indeed, he was known as the "Rothschild of the E." 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 (1836–1880), and converted to Christianity.
Career
She was editor-in-chief of The Observer and The Sunday Times. 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 United Kingdom they were financiers whose investments included ownership of newspapers. 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".
The story provoked an international outcry and led to the release and pardon of Dreyfus and court martial of Esterhazy.
Frederick"s death in 1903 triggered Beer"s breakdown, with her erratic behavior 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, where she died in 1927.
Though Beer"s husband Frederick was buried in his father"s enormous mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery in north 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, Sussex. 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 forgivable because of her sexual 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.