Skip to content

Joan Lauder, Cat Lady

December 21, 2020
by the gentle author

In my imagination, Joan Lauder (1924-2011) was a mysterious feline spirit in human form who prowled the alleys and back streets, a self-appointed guardian of the stray cats and a lonely sentinel embodying the melancholy soul of the place.

Here are Rodney Archer’s memories with Phil Maxwell’s black and white photos from the eighties and Clive Murphy’s colour pictures from the nineties.

One day, when I went round to enjoy a cup of tea and shot of rum with Rodney in his cosy basement kitchen in Fournier St, he told me about Joan, the Cat Lady, who made it her business to befriend all the felines in Spitalfields during the nineteen eighties.

Rodney: Joan went all around the neighbourhood feeding the cats regularly and she had names for them. You’d see her crouching, looking through the corrugated iron surrounding Truman’s Brewery, waiting for the cats to come and then they suddenly all appeared. I think once I saw her there and I asked her what she was doing, and she said ‘I’m waiting for the cats to appear.’

‘My darlings,’ she really did call them, ‘My darlings,’ and it was wonderful in a way that she had this love of cats and spent her life encouraging them and feeding them and keeping them alive. I could never quite work it out, but she had a bag, like one of those trolleys you carry, full of cat food. Now, either she’d taken the tops off the tins or something, since I noticed – because she had a kind of witchlike aspect – that although she put her hands right into the tin to feed them and then just threw it down, I never saw any cat food on her hands. It was like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Over the years, I would chat to her but she was someone that you had to have some time for, because once she began she went on and on. The Cat Lady was strange – she spent all her money on the cats – she was like a character out of Dickens. She was almost a street person, except she had a place to live. And she did get benefits and she wasn’t an alcoholic or anything, she was very doughty, she had a bit of a moustache.

She was the kind of woman that, a hundred years ago, people would have been fearful of in a way. There was something awesome about her, because she had her own aura and she was there to feed the cats, and the cats were much more important to her than people. I’d talk about my cat to her and I think once she stopped by my door, and I opened it, and my cat sat looking at her.

The Gentle Author: I’ve heard she had this mantra, “Cats are better than rats.” Were there a lot of rats at that time?

Rodney: I think there were. When the market was still going and you had all the fruit and vegetables, the rats would come out to feed. I never saw that myself, but you might see a rat running along the curb. A lot of people said they were looking forward to the market closing because the area would be cleaner and neater, but I regretted that the market left and there weren’t cabbages everywhere.

The Gentle Author: Can you remember when you first saw the Cat Lady?

Rodney: I think I first saw her on the corner of Fournier St and Brick Lane. She had a huge physical endurance, but I think she must have been exhausted by her journey every day, because she would often stop for quite a long time, and she’d just be there looking around. I suppose she might have been looking for the cats. That’s why you could catch up with her and ask her how she was doing.

One day I just spoke to her, maybe I’d seen her around, and I said, ‘Are you feeding the cats?’ And she told me, and I said had a cat and so we talked about cats and the wisdom of cats and that kind of thing. And afterwards, I’d see her quite often. She didn’t talk much to me about her life – but she was the Great Mother of all the cats in Spitalfields.

Phil Maxwell photographed Joan, the Cat Lady, in the eighties

The cat lady on Brick Lane in the late nineteen eighties.

Phil: The woman in this photograph was always dressed in a head scarf and large coat. Usually she would pull a shopping bag on wheels behind her. She was the Cat Lady of Spitalfields. She knew where every cat and kitten lived in the wild and made it her task to feed them every day. Her bag was full of cat food which she would serve on newspaper at designated spots around Spitalfields.

Phil: The Cat Lady pauses for a second beside the Seven Stars pub on Brick Lane. She has just left some food in the ‘private road’ for some cats.

Phil: The Cat Lady floats past Christchurch School on Brick Lane – with her eyes closed, she contemplates the next cat awaiting a delivery.

Phil: The Cat Lady waits outside her favourite cafe in Cheshire St. Now a trendy boutique, in the nineteen-eighties you could buy a cup of tea and a sandwich for less than a pound at this establishment.

Phil: The Cat Lady ‘kept herself to herself’ and avoided the company of others

Phil: It must be about twenty years since I last saw the Cat Lady of Spitalfields. She devoted her life to feeding the stray cats of the area. I have no idea where she lived and I never saw her talking to another person. She seemed to live in her own separate cat world. Even though I was sitting opposite her when I took this photograph, I felt that she had created a barrier and would be reluctant to engage in conversation. It was impossible to make eye contact. I’m pleased I photographed her on the streets and in her Cheshire St cafe. She would not recognise Cheshire St and Brick Lane today.

Clive Murphy’s portrait of Joan Lauder

At Angel Alley, Whitechapel, 5th March 1992

Feeding the cat from The White Hart in Angel Alley, 5th March 1992

In Gunthorpe St, 5th March 1992

Buying cat food at Taj Stores, Brick Lane, 3rd August 1992

In Wentworth St, 3rd August 1992

Calling a cat, Bacon St, 3rd August 1992

The cat arrives, Bacon St, 3rd August 1992

Alley off Hanbury St, 2nd August 1992

Hanbury St, 26th November 1995

At Aldgate East, 3rd August 1992

At Lloyds, Leadenhall St, 3rd August 1992

Walking from Angel Alley into Whitechapel High St, 3rd August 1992

Beware Of The Pussy, 132 Brick Lane, 26th November 1995

Clive visits Joan in her Nursing Home, 1995

Clive: The women I have loved you could count upon the digits of one hand – my mother, her mother, our loyal companion Maureen McDonnell, the poet Patricia Doubell and the demented, incontinent Joan Lauder, the Cat Lady of Spitalfields who, in 1991, when I first spoke to her was already my heroine, a day-and-night-in-all-weathers Trojan, doggedly devoting herself to cats because human beings had for too long failed her.

She looked at me with suspicion when I suggested we tape record a book. Only my bribe that half of any proceeds of publication would fall to her or her favoured charities and enable the purchase of extra tins of cat food persuaded her at least to humour me. I could swear I saw those azure eyes, set in that pretty face, dilate.

I had entrapped her with the best of intentions as she, I was to learn, often entrapped, also with the best of intentions, the denizens of the feral world to have them spayed or neutered in the interests of control. But to the end, her end, I don’t think she ever trusted or respected me. I once found her surreptitiously laying down Whiskas in my hallway for my own newly-adopted cat which I named Joan in her honour. And she once spat the expletive ‘t***’ at me in a tone of total dismissal. To be called a foolish and obnoxious person was hardly comforting, given that I believe my own adage ‘in dementia veritas’ holds all too often true.

Black & white photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell

Colour photographs copyright © Clive Murphy

 

13 Responses leave one →
  1. December 21, 2020

    What a Heartworming Tale a few Days before Christmas. If it would be possible I would give the Cat Woman JOAN a Heartfelt Hug!

    Love & Peace
    ACHIM

  2. Susan Levinson permalink
    December 21, 2020

    I’ve been reading your daily e-mails for a long time, and this story is probably the most emotionally-affecting of all of them.

  3. December 21, 2020

    What a beautiful moving story. LIke Achim, I would hug Joan if I could.

  4. December 21, 2020

    Dear Gentle Author,

    I discovered your beautiful blog thanks to a friend who forwarded it to me during the first lockdown. It has been great solace to find your emails in my inbox every day.

    I thought I still lived in London (just) since I moved to Barnet 2 years ago. The pandemic proved me wrong. Without using hardly any public transport this year, it’s as if I lived in the other end of the world, and my heart grieves for the city I came to live in out of sheer love, learnt through books, 21 years ago.

    Reading your blog is also a reminder that it is many hearts who are grieving for London even while living in the midst of it. The destruction of it in the hands of corporate interests and a warped view of what human life means is a growing wound for many of us. You document it courageously, defending what is left of this wonderful city, but you also wisely help us face the transience of things by keeping them alive in memory, in images, in words.

    It is a source of great comfort, and beauty. Thank you!

    And a very happy Christmas in this uncertain year. May 2021 be kinder to us all.

    Warm regards,

    Adriana

  5. paul loften permalink
    December 21, 2020

    Wonderful story. Thank you. Joan had a long life 87 years but there is no information as to her early life. it may remain a mystery. The passing years would bury us all if it were not for the Gentle Author . May I thank her for her on behalf of all her dear friends that were not able to say the words but I am sure the purrs were music to her ears

  6. December 21, 2020

    Very moving. Nice to see Joan in colour and smiling.
    I too wonder what her early life was like.
    Clive’s cat got her name from an admirable lady =^.,.^=

  7. Derek Stride permalink
    December 21, 2020

    When the church was derelict, she used to feed a lot of cats round the back.

  8. Pamela Traves permalink
    December 23, 2020

    Joan Lauder, Cat Lover is a Wonderful Lady. How Kind and Loving She is with Her Hungry Pusses. God Bless Her.???????⛄?

  9. Helen permalink
    December 23, 2020

    Angels appear in many guises on earth – the clue is in the photograph for all to see the beauty of her soul.

  10. December 24, 2020

    I’ll be honest. I prefer Clive’s photos. Strangely Joan has gripped me recently and I’m working on some art work using my pics of her. The recollections of Clive and Rodney are wonderful.

  11. Glenn permalink
    December 28, 2020

    Fascinating. Thank you.

  12. January 6, 2021

    Joan is my auntie my mums long lost sister for nearly 50 years

  13. Phillip fowler permalink
    January 12, 2022

    I’m hazels brother can just remember my at auntie Joan .hope the book is finished will definitely buy a copy r.i.P joan.

Leave a Reply

Note: Comments may be edited. Your email address will never be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS