Rachel Beer

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 and The Sunday Times. Early life Rachel Sassoon was born in Bombay to Sassoon David Sassoon, of the Baghdadi Jewish 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 (1836–1880), and converted to Christianity. Frederick, an Anglican Christian, was also from a family of ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity. 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.