Rachel Beer

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Rachel Beer (1858-1927), granddaughter of David Sassoon, was editor of The Observer (1891-1904) and owner-editor of The Sunday Times (1893-1904).

She was the first female editor of a national newspaper and the only editor of two national newspapers simultaneously. She was an inhabitant of Royal Tunbridge Wells. She was already the editor of the Observer (owned by her husband) when she acquired the Sunday Times in 1893, and edited it herself without relinquishing her role at the Observer.

Under her control the paper 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.

Her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes her as "not considered a brilliant editor".^[1]

She was the aunt of the poet Siegfried Sassoon. Siegfried's father, Alfred, was Rachel's brother, but had been cut off by his family for marrying outside the Jewish faith. Rachel had done likewise, but in her case the action was forgivable because of her gender. She left a generous legacy to her nephew Siegfried, enabling him to purchase Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, where he spent the rest of his life.

Her husband, Frederick Beer is buried in the enormous mausoleum of her father-in-law, Julius Beer, in Highgate Cemetery in London. Rachel's family however, stepped in to prevent her burial in that bastion of Anglican religion. She was interred in the Sassoon family mausoleum in Brighton.