Rachel Beer - Biography

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; indeed, he was known as the "Rothschild of the East." 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. 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.

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 forgivable 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 above the fireplace.