Beatrice Webb
1858 – 1943 British Sociologist, economist, Fabian socialist, co-founder of the LSE
Social researcher and Fabian who co-founded the LSE and pioneered the study of poverty and labour.
- Affiliations
- Fabian Society; co-founder of the LSE; social researcher who coined the term 'collective bargaining'.
Beatrice Webb, born Beatrice Potter, was a self-taught social scientist who investigated poverty, cooperatives and trade unions. With her husband Sidney she was a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics in 1895. She helped write the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, an early blueprint for the welfare state, and coined the term 'collective bargaining'. In the 1930s she and Sidney published admiring work on the Soviet Union that later critics faulted for downplaying its repression.
Connections
- associate of George Bernard Shaw — Fellow Fabian and co-founder of the LSE.
- associate of George Bernard Shaw — Fellow Fabian and friend.
- family of Sidney Webb — Husband and lifelong writing partner.
- family of Sidney Webb — Wife and lifelong writing partner.
In the timeline
- 1895 Founding of the London School of Economics mentioned
- 1895 Fabian socialists found the London School of Economics co-founder
- 1895 The founders aim to train a governing class founder
- 1905 Beatrice Webb joins the Royal Commission on the Poor Law central figure
- 1995 The founders' aim, judged across a century founder assessed in hindsight