Page 7 - eMuse Vol.9 No.05_Classical

drivers refused to pick her up and she would some-
times damage the cab in retaliation, including reput-
edly ripping a door off its hinges once. In 1955, she
took a taxi to Perth, Western Australia and back. This
time she did pay the fare, ₤600.
It is also said she would sit in a Sydney bank smok-
ing cigarettes under a sign reading “Gentlemen will
refrain from smoking”. Music-lovers who attended
the regular free Sunday-afternoon concerts given in
the Town Hall by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
may recall how, just before things began, she often
appeared and wandered down the centre aisle, call-
ing out “Ruby? Ruby?”
Bea was well-educated, and very widely read – she
was legendary as a fast and voracious reader through-
Beatrice Miles — Sydney’s “iconic eccentric” out her life, even in her declining years, and reputed-
(17 September 1902 – 3 December 1973) ly read an average of two books every day. She spent

Who remembers this lady, I’m sure old Sydney Cab a lot of time in the State Library of New South Wales
drivers do. Beatrice Miles (17 September 1902 – 3 reading books, until finally being banned in the late
December 1973) was an Australian eccentric and bo- 1950s.
hemian rebel. Described as Sydney’s “iconic eccen- She was also regularly seen standing on street cor-
tric”, she was known for her contentious relation- ners with a sign offering to quote verses from Shake-
ships with the city’s taxi drivers and for her ability to speare for between sixpence and three shillings.
quote any passage from Shakespeare for money. Bea’s writings are in the state library, some in her
Born in Ashfield, New South Wales, to Maria Louisa own handwriting. They are: Dictionary by a Bitch, I
Miles (née Binnington), and the third of five surviving Go on a Wild Goose Chase, I Leave in a Hurry, For We
children, she grew up in the Sydney suburb of St Ives. Are Young and Free, Notes on Sydney Monuments
Her father, William John Miles, was a wealthy public and Advance Australia Fair. Fiercely patriotic, at
accountant and hotheaded businessman who had a twelve years old she wore a ‘No Conscription’ badge
tempestuous relationship with his daughter. to school during the referendum in World War I. In
She studied at Abbotsleigh and enrolled in an arts another incident Bea was disgusted when she was
course, but opted out, citing a lack of Australian sub- severely marked down for an essay about Gallipoli,
ject matter. Bea also enrolled in medicine, which was which she described as a ‘strategical blunder’, rather
unusual for women at that time, but in the first year than ‘a wonderful war effort’.
she contracted encephalitis lethargica. The disease When ill health started to catch up with her, she
permanently and profoundly changed her personal- finally stopped living on the streets, spending the last
ity, but not her intelligence, such that she was unable nine years of her life in the Little Sisters of the Poor
to finish her studies and became an eccentric and no- Home for the Aged in Randwick. She supposedly told
torious identity in and around Sydney. In 1923, tired the sisters that she had “no allergies that I know of,
of his daughter’s bohemian behaviour and lifestyle, one complex, no delusions, two inhibitions, no neu-
her father had her committed to a hospital for the roses, three phobias, no superstitions and no frustra-
insane, in Glebe, New South Wales where she stayed tions”. She died on 3 December 1973, aged 71, from
for two years. cancer. Australian wildflowers were placed on her
After that she lived on the street and was known coffin, while a jazz band played “Waltzing Matilda”
for her outrageous behaviour. She was arrested many and “Advance Australia Fair”. It has been suggested
times and claimed to have been “falsely convicted that she had renounced her lifelong atheism and be-
195 times, fairly 100 times”. For a while she was liv- come a Catholic before her death, but her family do
ing in a cave behind one of the Sydney beaches. not support this claim. She is interred at Rookwood
It was said that she always carried a ₤5 note pinned Cemetery in the family plot.
to her skirts, so that the police could not arrest her (By Kind permission of Dennis Hill, “Australian His-
for vagrancy. Her most notorious escapades involved tory —The Way It Was— A Nostalgic Look At Our
taxi drivers. She regularly refused to pay fares. Some Past”. Find it on Face book.)

May 2020 eMuse 7