Joan Lauder, Cat Lady Of Spitalfields

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…