Bea Miles – Sydney's Shakespeare-Reciting, Taxi-Fighting Bohemian – 1902 to 1973

If you rode a Sydney tram, bus or taxi between the 1930s and the 1960s, there was a fair chance you crossed paths with Bea Miles. Big, quick and loud, in a green tennis eyeshade, tennis shoes and a scruffy old greatcoat, she recited Shakespeare on street corners for a few coins, refused to pay her fares, wrenched doors off taxis that wouldn't take her, and racked up a court record that ran into the hundreds. She was also a wealthy North Shore businessman's daughter who matriculated with honours from Abbotsleigh, a ferocious reader and a fierce Australian patriot. This is her story, from the family home to the Little Sisters of the Poor at Randwick.

Bea Miles (right) in the early 1940s. Consolidated Press, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bea or Bee?

Both spellings turn up everywhere. The Australian Dictionary of Biography calls her "Bea (or Bee)". Her biographer Rose Ellis, as reviewed in Inside Story, says she insisted on "Bee" and not "Bea", and John Piggott's Senior column agrees that Bee was her preferred spelling "although nearly everyone knew her as Bea". I've used Bea in the title because that's the way most Sydney people remember it, but Bee is the name she chose.

Family and Childhood

Beatrice Miles was born on 17 September 1902 at Ashfield, the third surviving of the five children of William John Miles, a Sydney-born public accountant, and his wife Maria Louisa, née Binnington, a Queenslander (ADB). Her grandmother was Ellen Cordner-Miles, a celebrated contralto in 1870s Sydney, and the family's most successful business was Peapes & Co., the men's clothing store in George Street (Inside Story). Her death notice in 1973 also remembered her as born into "a wealthy family which ran the exclusive clothing store Peapes, in George St".

Wikipedia and the Waverley Council Library both say she grew up at St Ives on the upper North Shore. Inside Story instead mentions the family home at Wahroonga, which is where she caught the train to university. Either way, it was the leafy Ku-ring-gai end of Sydney.

St Ives on the upper North Shore, where Bea is said to have grown up. Andrew Harvey, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

William Miles was a man of contradictions. He was a rationalist and free-thinker who raised his children as atheists and taught them to reject "arbitrary" authority, and during the First World War he spoke from a box in the Domain against conscription (Inside Story). People Australia describes him as a wealthy political activist with far-right views, and as abusive. His relationship with Bea was violent; the ADB says an inheritance from her paternal grandmother allowed her to escape "the violent scenes that characterized her relationship with her father". Late in life Bea said that her father loved her until she was fourteen and hated her afterwards, and she alleged that the relationship had been incestuous (Inside Story, reviewing Ellis).

Abbotsleigh

Bea was educated at Abbotsleigh (ADB). At twelve she wore a "No Conscription" badge to school during the 1916 referendum campaign (Wikipedia); Inside Story says her father told all three of his daughters to wear "No" badges, and that Bea relished the fuss while her sisters did not. She was also marked down for an essay that called Gallipoli a "strategical blunder" rather than "a wonderful war effort" (Wikipedia). Her 1973 death report says she matriculated with honours, and David Roth's People Australia entry notes that she passed the University matriculation, with results published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 March 1920.

Abbotsleigh School, Wahroonga, where Bea went to school. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

University and the Sleeping Sickness

She enrolled in Arts at the University of Sydney but gave it up after a year "because they did not teach enough Australian stuff" (ADB). Wikipedia and the Waverley Council Library also say she enrolled in medicine, which was unusual for a woman then. As a young woman she was known as "mad Bee Miles" for jumping on and off moving trains on the way to university (Inside Story).

Around 1920 she caught encephalitis lethargica, the "sleeping sickness". Ellis tells how she fell asleep at a glove counter in Farmer's department store while shopping with her mother and could not be woken, and how she nearly died (Inside Story). Ellis and others believe the illness shaped the rest of her life: the sensitivity to light that had her wearing an eyeshade, the weight she put on in her forties, and her restless love of movement and attention. Not everyone agrees. David Roth, who found her Callan Park case notes in NSW State Records in 2024, says the evidence of an attack in 1920 is "inconclusive at best", and that the Callan Park doctors listed a "psychopathic constitution" as the main cause, with encephalitis secondary (People Australia).

Gladesville and Callan Park

Fights with her father went on, over her way of life and her sexual "freedom". In 1923 he had her committed to the Hospital for the Insane at Gladesville (ADB). The ADB says she stayed until publicity in Smith's Weekly led to her release in 1925. Later research tells a longer story. Roth, drawing on Ellis, says she went straight from Gladesville to Callan Park in February 1925 and spent 20 months there, apart from a spell at Kenmore in Goulburn and several escapes, one of which got her to Brisbane and Toowoomba. In Brisbane five doctors found her sane, though eccentric. She left Bayview private mental hospital in Sydney late in 1927 (People Australia). Smith's Weekly ran the headline "Madhouse Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl. Five Doctors Declare Her Sane" on 19 March 1927. Inside Story dates her first notoriety to a "sensational escape" in February 1927, and says that afterwards her father paid her a weekly allowance to keep her away from the family.

Gladesville Hospital, the old Hospital for the Insane where Bea was committed in 1923. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

She went back into institutions for short periods during the 1930s, and was admitted to Callan Park again in 1959, for two months (People Australia). Roth found her own accounts of chaos and cruelty in the hospitals exaggerated in places, while Ellis argues that her doctors judged her "through the lens of their own morality" (People Australia; Inside Story).

A Tenant of the City

Her long relationship with Brian Harper ended when she was 38: he wanted to marry, and she despised men who married. From then on, the ADB says, she had "no fixed address". During and after the Second World War, Sydney's housing shortage left her sleeping rough. Ellis points out that "no one chooses to be homeless": her allowance meant the welfare services wouldn't help her, so she called herself a "tenant of the city" (Inside Story).

Ellis pieced together her day. Up at 5am, blankets hooked to her belt, she had steak and eggs at Mason's Café in Elizabeth Street, opposite Central, every morning for nearly twenty years, then a free bath at Dobson's Turkish Bathhouse. She dined at 5pm, always on curried tongue and peas. She slept in a cave at Rushcutters Bay, under a shed in the Domain, on the steps of St James' Church or in the bandstand in Belmore Park (Inside Story). In 1948 a Daily Telegraph journalist visited her cave near Rushcutters Bay and listed her fifteen "rules for living", including to live "toughly, dangerously, excitingly, exhilaratingly and simply".

Belmore Park near Central, one of the places Bea slept. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St James' Church, King Street. Bea slept on its steps until one of the clergy told her to go. Henry King, Tyrrell Collection, Powerhouse Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One nurse who trained at Sydney Hospital in 1952–56 remembered Bea walking in from Martin Place and sleeping overnight in a small room at the ambulance end of casualty, drying her washing on the instrument sterilisers. The organist at St James' told the same nurse that Bea would sit up the back and shout if she didn't like his crescendos, and that once, when he tried her suggestion, it sounded better (The Senior).

Christ Church St Laurence

In the 1950s she came to treat the rectory of Christ Church St Laurence, near Central, as home. The rector, Father John Hope, who often had to bail her out, gave her a place on the porch between the rectory dining room and the vestry. Clergy had to step over her on their way to vest for Mass. She asked for the church windows to be left open so she could hear evensong, and lectured the altar boys on rationalism. After a spell in Long Bay Gaol for wrenching a door off a taxi, she was allowed to sleep in the rectory laundry, and she stayed until Father Hope retired in 1964 (Wikipedia, citing L. C. Rodd's John Hope of Christ Church, 1972). Inside Story notes that Father Hope was the uncle of the historian Manning Clark.

Christ Church St Laurence, George Street. Bea slept in its rectory until 1964. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Shakespeare for Sixpence

Her best-known way of earning a living was reciting Shakespeare, at prices from sixpence to three shillings (ADB). Ellis calls her a "roving reciter": she wore a sandwich board, caught a bus from Eddy Avenue to somewhere like Watsons Bay, and in the afternoons worked a regular spot such as the steps of the Mitchell Library, where the students passed by (Inside Story). Her death report remembered her recitations "at the Domain". Dorothy Hewett put her into her 1958 novel Bobbin Up as "Sydney's most famous woman", with a sign on her back reading "Shakespeare readings. Any speech on request ... 2/–" (Wikipedia).

The Library

She read voraciously, reputedly two books a day, and spent long hours in the Public Library of New South Wales until she was banned in the late 1950s (ADB; Wikipedia). Inside Story says the ban was for smoking. Later, at Randwick, she borrowed an average of 14 books a week from the branch library (Wikipedia, citing Randwick: A Social History, 1984).

The Mitchell Library in December 1923. Bea recited on its steps and read inside until she was banned. The Daily Mail, State Library of New South Wales, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bea and the Taxi Drivers

Nothing made her more famous than her war with Sydney's cabbies. She refused to pay fares, especially in taxis, and drivers often wouldn't pick her up. In return she would leap onto their running-boards, bumper bars or bonnets, or throw herself against the side of the cab, and doors came off their hinges (ADB). Her 1973 death report said that once she was in a taxi, "demands, force and even buckets of water and hosing failed to shift her". She was assaulted several times by unpaid drivers in the 1950s (ADB), and Ellis notes that the drivers were never charged (Inside Story). Her closest friend from the 1940s was a taxi driver, John Beynon (ADB).

Yet she could pay, and handsomely. In 1955 she paid a woman taxi driver £600 to take her to Perth and back, a trip of nineteen days (ADB). A Trove report of 27 January 1955 is headlined "BEA MILES WAS HERE". On Christmas Day 1956 she interrupted a driver's Christmas dinner to be taken to Broken Hill by way of Melbourne, and paid £73 10s when they got back to Sydney (Wikipedia, citing Randwick: A Social History). Les Murray put her taxi journey into his poem "The Quality of Sprawl" (1983) as an image of Australia (Wikipedia).

Arrests and Court Cases

Police and Bea were at war for decades. She claimed she had been "falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times", though the obituaries gave lower figures (ADB). Two newspaper reports on Trove give a flavour of the cases:

• August 1948, Parramatta. Beatrice Miles, 45, appealed to Judge Shortland at Parramatta Quarter Sessions against a £5 fine for offensive behaviour. She had been found guilty of trying to stop a car on the Great Western Highway by waving her hand over her head. "Everywhere you go today people are hailing cars," said the judge, upholding her appeal.
• July 1950, Central Court. Beatrice Miles, 48, "described as a student", was fined £2 with £1 costs for offensive behaviour. A Double Bay taxi driver said she jumped into his front seat in Martin Place and demanded to go to Double Bay; he refused "because of the dirty condition she was in", and she wouldn't get out, screamed and called the constable a fool.

In front of a magistrate in 1932 she shouted at her own solicitor to "shut up" when he raised the effects of her sleeping sickness (Inside Story). When she went into care in 1964, the death report said, she had more than 200 convictions, "none was for a criminal offence". "I am psychologically incapable of crime," she said.

Long Bay Gaol, about 1900. Bea served time here after pulling the door off a taxi. Unknown photographer, Randwick Library Local Studies, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Politics and Writing

Bea and her brother John joined the far-right Australia First Movement in 1941, but there is no record of her taking part in its activities and she was not among the members interned in 1942 (Wikipedia, citing Barbara Winter). She was a fervent nationalist and advocated free love (ADB).

She wrote a great deal and longed to be published. A few short travelogues appeared in country newspapers, but her accounts of her years in institutions and her big journeys to northern Australia in the 1930s never found a publisher (Inside Story). Her manuscripts are in the State Library of NSW, some in her own hand: Dictionary by a Bitch, I Go on a Wild Goose Chase, I Leave in a Hurry, For We Are Young and Free, Notes on Sydney Monuments and Advance Australia Fair. A corrected typescript of part of Advance Australia Fair is in the University of Sydney Library (Wikipedia). In August 1973 the filmmaker James Ricketson recorded an oral history interview with her, now in the State Library (Wikipedia).

Last Years at Randwick

Ill health caught up with her, and in 1964 she went into the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged at Randwick (ADB). There she is said to have told the sisters she had "no allergies that I know of, one complex, no delusions, two inhibitions, no neuroses, three phobias, no superstitions and no frustrations" (ADB). A friendly taxi driver took her to visit Father Hope (Wikipedia). One of the sisters remembered her comforting the old and sitting patiently with the dying, and even praying with them: "I don't believe in God, but she does" (Wikipedia, citing Randwick: A Social History).

Death and Burial

Bea Miles died of cancer at the home on 3 December 1973, aged 71 (ADB; 1973 death report). People Australia records it as rectal cancer. At her request, Australian wildflowers were placed on her coffin, and a jazz band played "Waltzing Matilda", "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and "Advance Australia Fair" (ADB). The old Wilson's Almanac page adds a ribbon reading "One who loved Australia", and says she asked for lines from Measure for Measure on her monument: "Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep."

Where she lies is one of the points the sources disagree on. The ADB says she was cremated. Wikipedia says she is in the family plot at Rookwood, though that line is marked as needing a citation. The Senior published a reader's photo of "the plaque at Bee's grave, Rookwood Necropolis", and another reader remembered going to her funeral at Rookwood.

Rookwood Necropolis, where Bea's memorial plaque is. J Bar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How Sydney Remembers Her

• The Archibald: Alex Robertson's portrait of her was entered for the 1961 Archibald Prize (ADB).
• On stage: the musical comedy Better Known as Bee was performed by the Q Theatre Company at Penrith in 1984 (ADB). Vashti Hughes's one-woman show Dictionary by a Bitch was staged at the State Library, the place Bea loved to haunt (Sydney Arts Guide; Urban Village).
• Lilian's Story: Kate Grenville's 1985 novel Lilian's Story was loosely based on her life, and it became a film starring Toni Collette and Ruth Cracknell (Wikipedia).
• Books and poems: she appears in Dorothy Hewett's Bobbin Up and Les Murray's "The Quality of Sprawl". There's a likeness of her, unnamed and played by Hewett, in the 1978 film The Night the Prowler, written by Patrick White (Wikipedia). Rose Ellis's biography Bee Miles: Australia's Famous Bohemian Rebel (2023) was shortlisted for the 2024 National Biography Award (Wikipedia).
• The B Miles Women's Foundation is named after her, though it isn't funded from her estate (Waverley Council Library).

She isn't one of the writers on the Sydney Writers Walk plaques at Circular Quay. The published list of plaques doesn't include her (Monument Australia). The Sydney that remembers her best is the one in people's stories: of the woman who did the crossword in a stranger's paper on the train from Auburn and handed it back without a word, or who lectured a six-year-old on a Bondi tram about the old kings of Ireland (The Senior).

Timeline

• 17 September 1902: born at Ashfield.
• 1916: wears a "No Conscription" badge to Abbotsleigh.
• 1920: passes matriculation; starts university; falls ill with encephalitis lethargica.
• 1923: committed by her father to Gladesville Hospital for the Insane.
• February 1925: transferred to Callan Park (People Australia).
• 1927: escapes; Smith's Weekly reports five doctors found her sane; leaves Bayview late in the year.
• About 1940: her relationship with Brian Harper ends; "no fixed address" from then on.
• 1941: joins the Australia First Movement with her brother John.
• 1948: wins a Parramatta appeal against a fine for hailing a car.
• 1950: fined at Central Court after refusing to leave a taxi in Martin Place.
• 1955: pays £600 for a nineteen-day taxi trip to Perth and back.
• Christmas Day 1956: taxi to Broken Hill via Melbourne.
• Late 1950s: banned from the Public Library of NSW.
• 1959: two months in Callan Park.
• 1961: Alex Robertson's portrait of her in the Archibald Prize.
• 1964: enters the Little Sisters of the Poor home, Randwick.
• 3 December 1973: dies at Randwick, aged 71.
• 1984: Better Known as Bee staged at Penrith.
• 1985: Kate Grenville's Lilian's Story.
• 2023: Rose Ellis's biography.

Where the Sources Disagree

• How many convictions: Bea claimed 195 false and 100 fair (ADB). The 1973 death report said more than 200. Wilson's Almanac quotes her as saying "80 I deserved but 120 were unfair and malicious". The ADB says obituaries gave lower estimates than her own.
• Her studies: the ADB mentions only Arts. Wikipedia and the Waverley Council Library say she also enrolled in medicine.
• Her illness: Ellis and others put her behaviour down largely to encephalitis lethargica; Roth thinks the evidence for it is inconclusive.
• Her time in institutions: the ADB has her released from Gladesville in 1925 and says nothing more; Roth and Ellis say she went straight to Callan Park and was not finally out until late 1927.
• The family home: St Ives (Wikipedia, Waverley Council) or Wahroonga (Inside Story).
• Religion at the end: the ADB says she renounced her atheism and received Catholic rites; Wikipedia says her family do not support this.
• Burial: cremated (ADB), or the family plot at Rookwood (Wikipedia, unsourced). The Senior shows a plaque at Rookwood.
• The Perth trip: the ADB says the driver took her to Perth and back; Wilson's Almanac says she stayed three months studying wildflowers and came back by sea.
• The Lilian's Story film: Wikipedia's text gives 1995, while its IMDb reference is to the 1996 film.

My Earlier Posts

• Rookwood Cemetery & Necropolis – Lidcombe – Sydney – New South Wales

Sources

• Judith Allen, "Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 10, 1986: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573
• David Roth, "Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)", People Australia, National Centre of Biography, ANU: https://peopleaustralia.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573
• "Bea Miles", Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bea_Miles
• Anne-Marie Condé, "Living toughly" (review of Rose Ellis, Bee Miles, 2023), Inside Story, 28 August 2023: https://insidestory.org.au/living-toughly/
• John Piggott, "Bee Miles: More memories of the famous Sydney eccentric", The Senior, 30 October 2023: https://www.thesenior.com.au/story/8400911/miles-of-yarns-about-that-great-sydney-eccentric-bee/
• "Bea Miles", Waverley Council Library: https://celebrating.waverley.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/73081
• "BEA MILES WINS, LOSES", 12 August 1948, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/274436013
• "Bea Miles Fined", 14 July 1950, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/27573614
• "BEA MILES WAS HERE", 27 January 1955, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/248217374
• "Sydney's original hippy dies", 5 December 1973, via Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131696342
• "Bee Miles, one of Sydney's favourite individualists", Wilson's Almanac (archived): https://web.archive.org/web/20090103104100/http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/bee_miles.html
• "Dictionary by a Bitch: a new play about Bea Miles", Sydney Arts Guide: https://sydneyartsguide.com.au/dictionary-by-a-bitch-a-new-play-about-bea-miles/
• "Dictionary by a Bitch: The Story of Sydney's Bea Miles", Urban Village, 4 June 2021: https://urbanvillage.com.au/2021/06/04/dictionary-by-a-bitch-the-story-of-sydneys-bea-miles/
• "Sydney Writers Walk", Monument Australia: https://www.monumentaustralia.org/themes/culture/community/display/94161-sydney-writers-walk-
• Wikimedia Commons, for all photographs (credits under each picture): https://commons.wikimedia.org/