MindOut, the LGBT+ Mental Health Service, celebrates Barbara Bell – as their lesbian Icon.
MindOut icons, past and present featured in the Gscene annual Lesbian Icons issue, include Helen Boyle, Hannah Gadsby, Anne Lister… but so far, so obvious……
This year they wanted to celebrate a local woman, someone who did an amazing amount for the wellbeing of our communities. She was well-known but unsung, she created communities, she supported numerous individuals and left some wonderful oral history.
MindOut wanted to feature Barbara as an icon to inspire – we could all be a bit more Barbara…
Brighton is often heralded as a city with a thriving LGBT+ population. It can be easy to forget the people who have worked to nurture and sustain our communities. Barbara Bell was a vivacious woman known for her fabulous fashion sense, a love of walking the Downs in later life, and for her support of others. She was truly an iconic part of Brighton.
Her friend Kim Foster noted that she had “an uncanny sense of colour and vibrancy”.
Barbara always had a keen eye for spotting queer fashion from finger rings to flamboyant shirts. She talked about going to Tower Bar in Blackpool in the BBC documentary It’s Not Unusual, noting “They had fashions. […] I remember vividly one year it was pink shirts. Nobody ever had pink shirts, so if you wore a pink shirt you signalled, definitely, that you were a gay boy.”
Barbara moved to Brighton after serving as a London police officer during WWII and spending several years teaching in Nigeria. In the 1960s she took on the role of south-coast representative of the London-based Minorities Research Group (MRG). Barbara said in her 1999 Ourstory autobiography Just Take Off Your Frock: “My job was to support lesbians who were having trouble with their relationships or make contact with those who felt isolated. The organisers would write to me from London or phone me if somebody wanted help or wanted to come and see me. Finding out about this club seemed like a salvation to these women – before then they were floundering around not knowing…”
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.
Reflecting on the time, Barbara said: “It was a wonderful thing because you could just let your hair down and be natural. […] We were able to discuss our lives quite openly, I suppose it was like being in the psychiatrist’s chair really, so good for us all.”
After the south-coast MRG broke up, Barbara continued to care for people in the community. She was a teacher and carer to a young man with severe disabilities for 16 years. During the AIDS crisis, she felt compelled to help however she could. In her memoir she said: “I’m not a political animal. When the Sussex Gay Liberation Front started up in Brighton in the early 1970s I thought, good luck to them let them get on with it. But when AIDS reared its ugly head I felt I must do something to help – it could have struck the lesbian girls, not the gay boys. The Sussex AIDS Centre and Helpline was started in 1985. It was just called the AIDS Helpline then and I was in it practically from the beginning. […] I was asked if I’d had any training. I said, ‘Well, I’m old, I’m 70, there’s not much I don’t know and I’ve got common sense. Surely there’s something I can do? I’ll scrub floors, anything to help.’”
She befriended numerous individuals while working with the AIDS Helpline, providing companionship, cooking, and whatever else was needed. She cared deeply about these individuals, and cherished the time she was able to spend with them.
“‘You just give thanks, in my case that I’ve known them, and you give thanks for their life. My life has been enriched no end by the relationships I’ve made with people who I’ve visited. I loved the work because they taught me a lot. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’re still learning. It does make you realise how bloody well off you are, not to be having something like that. Because it’s a horrible illness. Cancer’s bad enough but this is a pernicious horrible thing.”
Barbara had faced breast cancer in her fifties, and spoke openly about the impact of having a mastectomy. Never shy about discussing her sex life, she was candid about struggling to feel attractive and desirable after the surgery. Despite this, she was a tireless flirt and never shy about stopping a stranger to tell them she liked their fashion or found them beautiful.
It’s no wonder that Barbara was such an important part of the community. Her frankness made her easy to talk to, and she was always happy to share a meal with friends. Kim Foster remembers her as a strong and outspoken woman, more often than not in a Pearly King cap.
Barbara Bell was born December 13, 1914 and died, April 3, 2005.
MINDOUT INFO
If you would like to be a volunteer for MindOut, they’re recruiting just now for both online support workers and peer mentors.
♦ For more information and an application pack see their website; www.mindout.org.uk.
♦ MindOut offers safe LGBT+ spaces to explore mental health.
♦ They have advocacy workers, out of hours online support, peer support group work, peer mentoring and a counselling service.
♦ All of their services are confidential, non-judgemental and independent.
For more information:
• See our website: www.mindout.org.uk
• Email us: info@mindout.org.uk
• Call us: 01273 234839
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