Queer Places:
5 Norfolk Buildings, Brighton BN1 2PZ, UK
Barbara Bell (December 13, 1914 - April 3, 2005) was a teacher and
activist. When she was a teenager from Blackburn in the 1930s, Bell was
introduced to the Paris scene by her queer friend Cyril, the accountant at the
dairy where she worked. Cyril gave her a couple of addresses where, he said,
You'll find your sort of company. One of these addresses was that of the club
Le Monocle. Barbara Bell was a beloved and inspirational member of Brighton's lesbian and gay community for nearly 50 years. She relished her life as a lesbian and never ceased to be delighted by women.
She thought nothing of stopping a woman in the street to tell her she looked lovely. She was not ashamed or scared of her lesbian identity, appearing in the BBC2 series, It's Not Unusual (1997), a lesbian and gay oral history of the 20th century, and publishing her life story - at the age of 84 - in a book called Just Take Your Frock Off.
While living in Brighton, she taught children with learning difficulties and cared for a severely disabled young man for 16 years. She also worked as a volunteer in the developing lesbian and gay community. During the 1960s, she was the south-coast representative of the Minorities Research Group, the first openly lesbian organisation in Britain. Her job was to organise social events and counsel isolated or bereaved lesbians.
She performed these tasks with her usual zest, together with an intuitive, unsentimental kindness. When the Aids crisis hit Britain, Barbara was among the first to volunteer help. By then in her 70s, she buddied numerous sufferers through to their inevitable deaths.
She became a volunteer with the Sussex Aids Centre and Helpline, "buddying" men and women with HIV/ Aids and their relatives. Her friend the gay-rights activist
Chris Farrah-Mills regards her as one of the most charismatic footsoldiers and hardiest protagonists of the gay movement. She got involved right from the beginning. This slightly eccentric older woman turned up, just saw a need and said, "What can I do?" She rolled up her sleeves and did practical things. She was so jolly, an incredible "life force". There were no ifs and buts. It was "These are our own people who are in need", and going out there and doing it.
Born and brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire, where both her parents worked in a cotton mill, Barbara's long romance with women started when she was 14 and employed at a dairy. Her incipient lesbianism was recognised by a young female customer, who whisked her off in a motor car to the Yellow Hills, and showed her some things she found "very interesting".
As an adolescent lesbian, Barbara was lucky to have not only a supportive family but also gay people who would help with advice and introductions. A gay man at the dairy taught her how to kiss, took her to Manchester to see revues by
Cole Porter and
Noel Coward, and introduced her to his friends, Jan and Bert, an older lesbian couple.
Cole Porter's song, Experiment, became a lifelong favourite of Barbara's, and she took its advice to heart in her relationships with women.
London was facing the ravages of wartime and, working on beats all over London, both West and East ends, Bell came across a high-class lesbian club in Mayfair where she would go on a night out. She had already, aged 17, savoured its Parisian equivalent: Le Monocle, a club run by a Brylcreemed woman called Lulu - a Bohemian haven to which she escaped with Trudi, her first (German) girlfriend. This initial liaison set the stage for numerous other relationships with women, including two "marriages" and various brief, illicit encounters: what she defined as little "flutters".
Stylish to the last - and never fixed in her lesbian identity - Barbara dipped and dived between butch and fem, depending on her lovers' desires.
She went to London as a young woman, trained as a policewoman and, during the war, worked all over the capital as a police officer. After the death of her parents, she returned to Blackburn to run the family sweet shop, before training as a teacher. Her jobs included work in a reform school, and in Nigeria, before she moved to Brighton in the mid-1950s.
She had a great love of fast cars. Barbara and her partner, Sheila, would go zooming up and down the coast in their dark green Bond Equipe, checking in on lesbians who were suffering from heartbreak and loneliness. They eventually formed a social group that took turns meeting at different members’ houses.
She dressed with panache and from an early age - encouraged by her father, who had a tailor friend - took huge delight in choosing and co-ordinating outfits, such as her first mannish, made-to-measure pinstripe suit. Women friends in Brighton, where she lived for many years, remember her as a very stylish dresser. Several came to know her through the local women's walking group, to which she belonged into her eighties. One describes her as always looking "very chic, in her black leather trousers and cap". Another, Mica Bobsin, recalls, "That was very important to her, how she came across. It kind of told the story about her."
Barbara Bell will be remembered, above all, as a feisty, inspirational woman who spoke her mind and who, with her flamboyant persona, helped to subvert the stereotypical image of the dour dyke. A Brighton friend, Linda Pointing, saluted her as
truly remarkable in her desire to be open about her sexuality in a very candid way. She didn't have wealth to cushion her from prejudice. Her courage and bravado saw her through - and her delight in people.
She never lost her eye for an attractive female. Even in her mid-eighties, and in the final pages of her autobiography, she admitted to being still "on the lookout. I can't be celibate for ever. It's not in my nature."
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