Beatrice Webb (22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was the wife of Sidney Webb, with whom she co-founded the London School of Economics; she also served as President of the Fabian Society from 1939 to 1941, preceding Stafford Cripps.
Biography[]
Beatrice Potter was born in Standish, Gloucestershire, England in 1858. While researching the British co-operative movement, she fell in love with like-minded intellectual Sidney Webb and married him in 1892. They soon engaged in full-time social research; in 1894, they co-founded the London School of Economics, together with Robert Haldane, in order to promote research into social policy. Their own research bore considerable fruits, most notably The History of Trade Unionism, and English Local Government, a work whose quality was paralleled by its size (11 volumes, 1903-1929). In 1913 they established a further platform for their views through the creation of the journal New Statesman. Beatrice was a member of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law from 1905 to 1909, where together with George Lansbury she was largely responsible for the minority report which recommended a breakup of the existing Poor Law, to be replaced by separate agencies to cope with different social problems, such as unemployment, old age, etc. This solution became gradually established over the next decades. She went on to serve as President of the Fabian Society from 1939 to 1941, and she died two years later at the age of 85.