Janet (Jessy) Thomson Philip

Janet Thomson Philip, Baroness Beveridge (26 November 1876 – 25 April 1959), known as Jessy Philip, Jessy Mair and later Janet Beveridge, was a member of the third cohort of female students to study at the University of St Andrews and was School Secretary at the London School for Economics (LSE) from 1920 to 1939. She took a role in producing and promoting the Beveridge Report that her husband William Beveridge had been commissioned to write by the Churchill war ministry Labour-Conservative coalition government.

Career From July 1915, Philip volunteered for the Ministry of Munitions before joining as a staff member. She was appointed to a role at the Ministry of Food as it was inaugurated in 1916, and took on the role of Assistant Director for Bacon Distribution in September 1917.

Between 1920 and 1938, she served as School Secretary and Acting Dean at the London School for Economics She had previously worked with William Beveridge, LSE Director, as his private secretary at the Ministry of Munitions.

Archival research by Ann Oakley, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at UCL, found that Philip was instrumental in helping to produce and publicise the Beveridge Report which led to the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom; a mathematician from the University of Cambridge, when he was her external examiner. They married in Newport on Tay in 1897 and had four children, including Lucy Mair, a notable professor of Anthropology. After he retired in 1933, David Mair rarely lived at home; he died in 1942. who was LSE Director between 1919 and 1937. Six months after her first husband's death, she married Beveridge on 15 December 1942 and became Lady Beveridge. It is considered unlikely that their relationship was physical even after marriage. They are buried at Thockrington Church in Northumberland, England.