I am an atheist, a true thinker and speaker. I cannot stand or
endure the priggery, caddery, snobbery, smuggery, hypocrisy, lies,
flattery, compliments, praise, jealousy, envy, pretence, conventional
speech and behaviour upon which society is based. Bee Miles
September 17, 1902 | Birth of Bee Miles, Sydney
individualist
Then there was Bee Miles, who must surely be an
immortal Sydneysider. According to contemporary newspaper reports, in
pre-World War II Sydney Bee was more widely known than the Prime Minister.
From a wealthy North Shore family, at only 12 years of age young Beatrice
wore a ‘No Conscription’ badge to school during the contentious conscription referendum in World War I. Later, she was
severely marked down for an essay about Gallipoli,
which she described as a 'strategical blunder' rather than a 'wonderful war
effort'. In this, as in many aspects in her later life, she went quite
against the norms of her day.
A strong swimmer, it is said she once swam about a mile from suburban Coogee Beach to Wedding Cake Island with a sheath knife strapped to her
leg as protection from the sharks. While Bee was on holidays at Palm Beach,
and a young boy went missing in the surf, Bee swam out to look for him even
after the lifesavers had given up the search.
Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl
Bee had a love-hate relationship with her father, who was pro-Aboriginal and
anti-British, but she took on many of his nationalistic ideas and values. At
the age of 21, following an illness, she was admitted by her father to Gladesville Mental Hospital. One story says that she
escaped the ‘lunatic asylum’, as it was then known, with the help of a Smith’s
Weekly tabloid front-page story that campaigned for her release –
Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl.
Advocating sexual freedom and rejecting the conservative values of the
middle classes, she became one of the bohemians of Sydney, mixing with
writers, artists and intellectuals. For many years, she lived in a drain at
Rushcutters Bay (an inner-city suburb) and earned her living reciting
Shakespeare on the streets, wearing her trademark tennis eye-shade and a
sign around her neck announcing her reasonable rates: “Shakespeare sonnets
6d (sixpence), Soliloquy 1/- (one shilling)”. She also carried the
psychiatric institution’s declaration of her sanity – a possession very
few of us can boast – and one-pound bank notes pinned inside her jacket.
Gentlemen will refrain from smoking
In a Sydney bank, Bee often took delight in enjoying a cigarette beneath a
sign that read, “Gentlemen will refrain from smoking”. Bee also
frequented public libraries, reportedly reading up to three books a day.
Ironically, today her manuscripts are treasured in the State Library of New South
Wales from which she was barred in the 1950s, and these include such
writings as Dictionary by a Bitch (“Duty: an excuse for showing
unwarranted interference in somebody else's business.”), I go on a
wild goose chase, and For we are young and free.
Bee was known to despise married men, saying that they were weak,
effeminate, and less than real men. Perhaps this conviction was the result
of of the end of a long-term relationship she had with a Brian Harper when
she was 38, or perhaps the relationship’s demise was caused by the
conviction. Perhaps neither.
Queen of the road
This great eccentric is probably best remembered for her addiction to taxi
and public transport travel, and more particularly her refusal to pay the
fares. However, on one occasion she paid a female cabbie 600 pounds for a
19-day taxi trip to Perth, a distance of some 4,000 km (2,500 mi).
After three months studying the wildflowers, she returned to Sydney by sea.
Bee was
famous for riding on car running-boards, bonnets and bumper bars and was
reputed to have pulled at least one car door off its hinges. (Your
almanackist recalls seeing Bee in a Sydney taxi but must report that the
doors appeared to be all intact.) She would also ride bicycles and
motorcycles through the city in an evening dress. Constantly in trouble with
Sydney’s police, she had more than 200 convictions recorded against her:
“80 I deserved but 120 were unfair and malicious”. Much of her notoriety
also came from her advocacy of free love in a day when such matters shocked
many Sydneysiders.
At Bee Miles’s funeral in 1973, her beloved Australian wildflowers were
placed on the coffin along with a ribbon reading ‘One who loved
Australia’. She requested that the following quotation be inscribed on her
monument (in a cemetery located next door to the Cumberland Campus of the
University of Sydney) :
Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing that none
but fools would keep. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene I
The sort of men who get married are almost
without exception commonplace, womanly, illiterate and unintelligent,
lacking in personal independence, completely incapable of creating love in
the intelligent woman or keeping alive love in the unintelligent woman for
more than five years. Bee Miles;
speaking to a Sydney Morning Herald journalist on the day of her retirement, June 2, 1965
*
Bee, or Bea? I confess I don't know, but apparently it has 'Bee' on her
headstone. Does any reader know more?
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Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl
Bee was
famous for riding on car running-boards, bonnets and bumper bars and was
reputed to have pulled at least one car door off its hinges. (Your
almanackist recalls seeing Bee in a Sydney taxi but must report that the
doors appeared to be all intact.) She would also ride bicycles and
motorcycles through the city in an evening dress. Constantly in trouble with
Sydney’s police, she had more than 200 convictions recorded against her:
“80 I deserved but 120 were unfair and malicious”. Much of her notoriety
also came from her advocacy of free love in a day when such matters shocked
many Sydneysiders.
