Red-Light Reeperbahn 1960-1962: Prep School for the Baby Beatles

Posted on February 10, 2022March 12, 2022 by Wolfgang Childerglas

Biographical, Memorabilia, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture

When the Beatles at the top of their fame reflected back on their climb to the summit of pop/rock music, they didn’t understate the early contribution to their success of exceedingly long periods of time spent playing in seedy, red-light night spots in Hamburg, West Germany. John Lennon summed up the immeasurable value of the Hamburg gigs phase to the early Beatles’ development, quipping to a journalist that though he was “born in Liverpool, (he) grew up in Hamburg”. George Harrison echoed John’s sentiments, saying that the band “didn’t have a clue” before the German experience, “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”. Paul McCartney concurred that playing to inebriated and often hostile German sailors “galvanised the band into a musical form”. The boys’ repertoire expanded by necessity, forced to learn countless new songs so as to fill in the marathon eight-hours sets in the Reeperbahn precinct clubs (“George Harrison Said The Beatles ‘Didn’t Have a Clue’ Before They Went to Hamburg, Germany”, Hannah Wigandt, Showbiz CheatSheet, 08-Dec-2021, www.cheatsheet.com ).

⌂ ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾

Just before departing for their first stint in Hamburg in 1960, the Beatles (still calling themselves the Silver Beatles) needing a regular drummer to fulfil their contractural obligations took on ex-Blackjacks drummer Pete Best (hired by the band’s manager of sorts Allan Williams). Williams’ business associate Harold Adolphus Phillips (who promoted the band during its Silver Beetles days and occasionally performed himself as “Lord Woodbine”) drove the now five-piece group to Germany.

⌂ ˢᵉᶜᵒⁿᵈ ᶠᶦᵈᵈˡᵉ ᵗᵒ ᴿᵒʳʸ ˢᵗᵒʳᵐ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᴴᵘʳʳᶦᶜᵃⁿᵉˢ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᵇᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ⁾

The band first played at the Indra Club in August 1960 (while sleeping rough in “pigsty” accommodation behind the screen of the nearby Bambi Kino). Later in the year they moved from the Indra down the street to the larger Kaiserkeller, performing late-night to sailors and sex workers, and the more appreciative art students. Both nightclubs were owned by Bruno Koschmider who was paying each of the five Beatles the princely sum of £2.50 a night to perform (although they did score an accommodation upgrade to actual hotels)🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

While they were doing their night sets at the Kaiserkeller, John, Paul and George met Ringo (Starr), also working the club with the (then) more highly regarded Hurricanes band. The Kaiserkeller was also where the boys met Astrid Kirchherr, a Hamburg local who was to have a profound influence on the band’s look …from Astrid they got their signature “mop-top” style haircut. In Hamburg the Beatles wore black leather jackets and cowboy boots, but Astrid’s influence has an effect here too with the rounded collarless jacket she made for Stu Sutcliffe🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 which became a prototype of the famous 1963 collarless suits worn by the Beatles🇮🇹. Astrid’s Hamburg art college student friends Klaus Voorman and Jürgen Vollmer also formed lasting associations with the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller days (especially artist and session musician Voorman who designed art covers for Beatles’ albums and played bass on post-breakup Beatles’ individual records).

The following year, while still contracted to Koschmider, the boys were enticed by Peter Eckhorn (Koschmider’s Reeperbahn rival) into defecting to the Top Ten Club on the offer of better money and conditions. Koschmider found out and it’s likely that it was he who turned the underage Harrison in to the police, leading to George’s deportation. When Paul and Pete went back to the Kaiserkeller to get their equipment a fire lit by them caused minor damage to the club. The seriously “pissed-off” Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson and they too were deported back to England…Lennon eventually followed them back to Liverpool, bringing the Beatles’ engagement at the Top Ten Club in 1961 to an abrupt close.

The Beatles’ residency at the Top Ten did result in a breakthrough of sorts in their career thus far, albeit a low-key one at the time…the boys managed to cut their very first record – backing singer Tony Sheridan (who was also on the Hamburg club circuit at the same time) on a German 45 for the Polydor label. The recording “My Bonnie” at Ernst-Merck-Halle listed the Beatles on the label as the “Beat Brothers”🇦🇺 (‘Tony Sheridan’, The Beatles Bible, Upd. 15-May-2017, www.beatlesbible.com).

⌂ ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ

The following year they were back however, this time performing at the Star-Club, operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher🇩🇪. By now the band members’ nightly fee had been upped to £67 each. They did three stints at the Star in 1962—the last two with Ringo in the drummer’s seat for the first time—undertaken reluctantly as the band had already released their first UK single on Parlophone and were champing at the bit to get on with consolidating their burgeoning recording career in the UK. The last live performance by the soon-to-be “Fab Four” in Germany was on New Years Eve 1962.

The tyro Liverpudlian band’s musical education in the north coast German city got a terrific leg-up from getting up close and personal with legendary US rock ‘n roll performers—such as Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis—also working the same St Pauli clubs at the time…Little Richard later recounted helping to hone Paul’s vocal style backstage while the Beatles were opening for the pioneering American rock performer at the Star.

The Beatles’ gig venues in Hamburg, 1960-62
Indra Club, Große Freiheit 64, St Pauli. 48 nights, August—October 1960 (37-hr week)
Kaiserkeller, Große Freiheit 36, St Pauli. 56 nights, October—November 1960
Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn 136, St Pauli. 92 nights,April—July 1961 (51-hr week)
Star-Club, Große Freiheit 39, St Pauli. April—May, November, December, 1962

The intense schedule imposed by the Hamburg club management, forcing the Beatles to play live for hours on end (with the aid of copious amounts of booze and a regular diet of ‘uppers’)🏁 formed the band into a tight musical outfit. This and the band’s increasingly fetzig (“wild”) and unpredictable stage antics and the decibel-shattering volume and raw energy of their playing earned them a loyal following in Hamburg (‘Breaking the Illusion: Hamburg and The Beatles’ Gritty Roots’, Riley Fitzgerald, Happy, 13-Oct-2021, www.happy mag.tv). And when they came back to Merseyside at the very beginning of 1963, the Beatles (–Pete/ +Ringo) didn’t come back as nobodies, Hamburg gave them an international reputation to trade on in the future.

Postscript: Return to their roots
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, this time as the hottest musical act on the planet. In 1966 at ‘Beatlemania’s” high-water mark, the group played two nights in Hamburg, not at any of the old haunts they had played as young scruffs but at the more respectable Ernst-Merck-Halle. This was part of the German leg (tagged the “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee“) of the band’s ‘66 world tour, which also included concerts in Munich and Essen.

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝ ↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Sutcliffe left the group and became engaged to Kirchherr in 1961 before his premature death the following year

🇮🇹 based partly on Pierre Cardin’s design

🇦🇺 it was a customer request in the Liverpool NEMS music store for ‘My Bonnie’ that first alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the Beatles

🇩🇪 Fascher, a West German amateur boxing champion, doubled as the Beatles’ bodyguard

🏁 “800 hours in the rehearsal room” McCartney called it

A Who’s Who of the Early Beatles Ensemble

Posted on January 25, 2022March 30, 2022 by Wolfgang Childerglas

Memorabilia, Music history, Popular Culture, Social History

There have been untold zillions of words written or spoken about the Beatles—in books, in music mags, in newsprint, on the web, in doco films and videos—over the last six decades. Anyone vaguely following the Liverpudlian Foursome’s stellar musical journey would be familiar with the major secondary personalities that feature prominently in the Beatles’ narrative (manager Epstein, producer Martin, the various wives and girlfriends, a few of the band’s musical peers like Jagger and Clapton, the so-called “Fifth Beatles” and so on), but after wading through weighty Beatles biographies by Hunter Davies and Phillip Norman and others, I’m more curious about the lesser dramatis personae who feature peripherally in the Beatles saga. As the Beatles journey on their irresistible path from provincial obscurity to global mega-celebrity, these less well-known names pop in and out of the various accounts of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s formative days on the nascent Liverpool rock scene…so let’s shift the spotlight away from the quartet of pop music icons momentarily on to some of the background players to note their particular part in the Beatles’ back story — most were fleeting and insignificant, others flitted in and out of the Beatles’ orbit without impact and a few were important participants out of the limelight.

The bulk of the minor figures getting a mention in the early Beatles story tend to connect directly with John Lennon, not surprisingly as he was the band’s founder and driving force in the rise of the Beatles phenomena. John’s best friend in childhood was Pete Shotton, who attended the same schools as the future ‘First’ Beatle (Dovedale Infants School and Quarry Bank Grammar). Shotton was there at Lennon’s earliest foray into musical bands, initially in John’s mid-1950s skiffle boy band which became the “The Quarrymen”. Other friends of John joined them in the band including Nigel Whalley, Rod Davis Ivan Vaughan, Len Garry, Eric Griffiths, Ken Brown, Colin Hanton, Chas Newby, Bill Smith, John Duff Lowe…and a little later of course Paul McCartney and his baby-faced pal George Harrison and Stu Sutcliffe (Quarrymen membership history was very fluid). Vaughan’s not insignificant claim to fame resides in his being the member/friend who introduced Paul to John at that famous 1957 church fete. Shotton, Vaughan and Whalley had the further distinction of forming the nucleus of John’s “Woolton Gang”…a mischievous, juvenile ”gang of four” imitating and paying homage to Lennon’s all-time favourite hero of children’s fiction, ’William’ from Richmal Cromwell’s Just William books. Of his many childhood friends and associates, John’s connexion with Pete Shotton lasted the longest. When the Beatles achieved fame and fortune Shotton was a beneficiary, managing first a supermarket owned by the Beatles and then the Apple Boutique. Eventually Shotton severed his business nexus with the band and founded his own chain of restaurants, Fatty Arbuckle’s.

In 1958 Lennon, having abjectly failed his ‘O’ Level exams at Quarry Bank High, shuffled off to Liverpool Art School. Lennox’s art school period was a key phase in the formation of the scruffy “Teddy boy’s” relationships, meeting his first girlfriend Thelma Pickles, his first wife Cynthia (née Powell) and close friend and early Beatle Stu Sutcliffe whose gifted artistic merit influenced him greatly. John formed other friendships at the art school including with Jeff Mohammed who took on a older brother sort of role in helping John try to cope with the trauma of his mother Julia’s sudden death; and with Bill Harry who went on to create Mersey Beat , a local music publication which helped the band gain early traction in Liverpool music circles. Harry also published Lennon’s poems and drawings in the newspaper.

Before Brian Epstein stumbled upon the Beatles the lads had another manager of sorts, Allan Williams. Williams owned The Jacaranda club in Liverpool which the young John and Paul frequented. Williams‘s role as booking agent and manager for the early Beatles (known variously as “The Quarrymen”, “Johnny and the Moondogs” and “The Silver Beetles” before settling on “The Beatles”) was a somewhat informal relationship, coming to an abrupt end in 1961 over a fee dispute, leaving the way clear for Epstein to assume the grid position and steer the Beatles’s career trajectory⦑1⦒. Williams did make an important contribution to the band’s early development as a musical force, he was the one who arranged for the band to undertake the first of a series of nightclub performances in Hamburg, West Germany, where the Beatles over three visits between 1960 and 1962 really honed their musical skills.

The Cavern Club in Liverpool was synonymous with the early Beatles who debuted in its damp, dingy warehouse cellar as the Quarrymen in 1957⦑2⦒. Ringo Starr then in another skiffle band had already made his first appearance in the club a week earlier (Ringo went on to join Liverpool’s top ‘beat’ band prior to the Beatles’ ascendancy – “Rory Storm and the Hurricanes”). A key Cavern figure was its longtime emcee/DJ Bob Wooler, instrumental along with Bill Harry in helping arrange Brian Epstein‘s first visit to the Cavern to see John, Paul, George and Pete play.

Another regular Liverpool venue for the Beatles in their various early incarnations was the Casbah Coffee Club, owned by the mother of the band’s drummer pre-Ringo (Pete), Mona Best. Not only were the Beatles able to perform there on dozens of occasions (tallies differ as to the exact number), Mrs Best allowed the fledgling band use of the Casbah’s basement to practice in.

After Epstein and his NEMS Company⦑3⦒ took over managing the four Liverpudlian ‘Moptops’ he recruited Tony Barrow from Decca to handle publicity for the group. In the full flush of Beatlemania fame Barrow found the task easier with the press now scurrying after him, but he was still there to extinguish any Beatles crises that might occur, such as John’s incendiary “more popular than Jesus” claim. Barrow wrote liner notes for the Beatles’ EPs and albums and was also the one who came up with the “Fab Four” tag.

When the Beatles started getting bookings outside of Liverpool they got themselves a road manager, Neil Aspinall, who had gone to high school with Paul and George at the Liverpool Institute. An accountant by training, Neil’s main attribute for the ‘roadie’ job—which he scored by being ‘besties’ with Pete Best at the time—was that he owned a battered old Commer van which was used to ferry round the boys and their amps to venues, and to London for their famous Decca audition on New Year’s Day 1962. After Epstein’s death Aspinall became CEO of the flagship Apple Corps and ran the Beatles’ business empire for 40 years⦑4⦒.

Another Beatle backgrounder Epstein put on the payroll was Tony Bramwell. During their Liverpool school years Bramwell was “besties'” with George Harrison and also a friend of Paul McCartney. From roadie in the Beatlemania days Bramwell rose to become CEO of Apple Films. Today, Bramwell is one of the very few surviving Beatles’ insiders.

When Aspinall got promoted to Beatles’ PA in 1963, the doorman at the Cavern, the 1.98m-tall Mal Evans got the ‘roadie’ gig. As well as being ‘roadie’ for the Beatles’ 1964 and 1965 US tours, Mal copped the brunt of the violent backlash by enraged Filipinos against the “Fab Four” during the notorious 1966 tour of that country. Evans also served as the band’s bodyguard and in-attendance ‘gofer’ for any personal items required by any of the four musicians.

While Mal Evans took care of most of the Beatles’ simple day-to-day needs, NEMS employee Derek Taylor was tasked with organising holiday trips for the boys as well as taking care of more complicated matters like copyright issues and acquiring personal properties on behalf of the four members, plus acting as “spin doctor” for the Beatles, for all of which he earned the sobriquet “Mr Fixit”.

Someone else behind the scenes who did very well from his connexion with the Beatles was music publisher Dick James. Just as the Beatles’ juggernaut was starting its ascent in 1963 James brokered a deal with Lennon and McCartney through their manager Epstein which enriched the publisher and his business partner but more crucially resulted in the two principal Beatles songwriters losing control of their own songs for ever!

Footnote: The Fifth Beatle
Beatles watchers have long speculated on particular individuals whose contribution/ role in the band’s story warrant, justified or not, the appellation fifth Beatle…the “would-be” candidates for the title are so manifold that it invites comparison with the list of numerous contenders regularly thrown up for “eighth wonder of the world“. Those ascribed the Fifth Beatle label over the years include George Martin, Brian Epstein, Neil Aspinall, Stuart Sutcliffe, Peter Best, Chas Newby, Jimmy Nichol, Tony Sheridan and Billy Preston.

~~|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|+|~~
⦑1⦒ securing for Williams the unenviable epithet, “the man who gave the Beatles away”
⦑2⦒ the band didn’t actually play the Cavern as the Beatles until February 1961, but within two-and-a-half years had racked up close to 300 appearances at the venue
⦑3⦒ North End Music Stores
⦑4⦒ after the band broke up Neil became the closest confidant of each of the ex-Beatles

Sydney’s Long-vanished Iconic Boxing Stadiums

Posted on December 16, 2021November 17, 2023 by funambulator@live.com

Inter-ethnic relations, Leisure activities, Local history, Memorabilia, Music history, Popular Culture, Sport, Sports history

Any Sydneysiders born in or prior to the 1890s would have been aware of the opening of Sydney Stadium. 1908 was the year this iconic boxing arena on the eastern outskirts of the city’s CBD first saw the light of day…literally saw the light of day as it was originally built as an open air stadium. The brainchild of promoter Hugh D McIntosh who constructed a ‘temporary’ outdoor boxing ring on the site of a former Chinese market garden in Rushcutters Bay to hold the world heavyweight boxing contest featuring Canadian title-holder Tommy Burns and Australian challenger “Boshter Bill” Squires. The fight was however just a warm-up for a legendary pugilistic bout in the same arena four months later between Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson. The fight garnered a lot of attention in Australia and internationally as Johnson was the first black boxer to contest (and win) a world title… and the heavyweight title at that!

The Australian press of the day predictably invoked the race card in the lead-up to the fight, racist descriptions of Johnson abounded, “coloured pugilist” was one of the few politer characterisations of Johnson (Bush Advocate, 28th December 1908). Burns’s thrashing at the hands of his much bigger black opponent—physically it was a real “David and Goliath” mismatch—prompted a backlash from white supremacists. Writer Jack London (ringside at the fight) put out the call for a “Great White Hope” to restore the white man to his ‘rightful’ place atop the professional boxing tree. The decisiveness of Jack Johnson’s triumph tapped into the prevailing currents of eugenic belief of the day, doing nothing to soothe anxieties about the “moral decay and decline” of the white race.

Stadiums Ltd
For almost its entire lifespan (from 1915 to its closure) Sydney Stadium was owned by Melbourne entrepreneur and gambling identity John Wren’s Stadiums Ltd…during that epoch the company enticed most of the top Australian professional boxers including Vic Patrick, Fred Henneberry, Dave Sands, Jimmy Carruthers and Tommy Burns (not the Canadian heavyweight champion) as well as renowned international prize-fighters such as Emile Griffith, Freddie Dawson and ‘Fighting’ Harada, to Sydney Stadium (‘The Wild Ones: Sydney Stadium 1908-1970’, Sydney Living Museums, www.sydneylivingmuseums.com).

“The old tin shed”
In 1912 the stadium was given a lid, an octagonal shaped roof of corrugated iron, and equiped for a capacity of 12,000 seated patrons. As the decades passed, hosting countless boxing and wrestling matches (in operation several nights a week at one point), it acquired the affectionate sobriquet “the old tin shed”❈. From the 1950s while boxing was still its core entertainment, the Sydney Stadium became a venue for popular music entertainers and television stars (eg, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Walt Disney’s Mouseketeers, and so on⚘. This continued into the Sixties with “The Samurai” star Koichi Ose, and perhaps its pinnacle, the Beatles performing there on their 1964 Australian tour (‘Sydney Stadium’, Milesago – Venues, www.milesago.com; ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Championship Title Fight 1908’, Woollahra Municipal Council), www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au).

Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.

ᗝ 𝔚𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔱 𝔏𝔢𝔦𝔠𝔥𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔱 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1936 (𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔟 𝔬𝔣 𝔑𝔖𝔚

ஓ๑ஓ

‘Blood’ sports and ”show biz” mash-up
Like it’s older relative at Rushcutters Bay, Leichhardt Stadium’s “bread-and-butter” remained pro-boxing and wrestling. However, during the Depression, the suburban stadium, perhaps anticipating Lee Gordon, innovated by incorporating the prevailing popular form of stage entertainment…Saturday night featured a program of boxing contests intermixed with “Vaudeville entertainment” acts (‘Leichhardt Stadium. 1922.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 08-Dec-1930 (Trove); Milesago).

𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔉𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨

ஓ๑ஓ

By the mid to late 1960s Australian professional boxing was in the doldrums and the stadium itself at Rushcutters Bay closed in 1970. Three years later the complex was demolished to make way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Leichhardt Stadium’s demise as a boxing venue occurred not long after in 1975.

◥ 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴 (𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓱𝓻𝓪 𝓜𝓾𝓷. 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓵)

Footnote: White City’s fleeting existence
In 1913 another landmark was erected in Rushcutters Bay, a 9-iron’s distance from Sydney Stadium. The White City Amusement Park, also built on former Chinese market gardens, was a precursor of Sydney’s better known Luna Park. White City offered pleasure-seekers a smorgasbord of lakes, canals, river caves, “pleasure palaces”, “fun factories”, the city’s first roller coaster and it’s pièce de résistance, a gigantic (Pennsylvanian-constructed) carousel. White City lasted less than four years before being burnt to the ground after a lightning strike in 1917 (‘Lost Sydney : White City Amusement Park’, Pocket Oz, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au). In the early 1920’s the White City tennis complex was erected on the site.

𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬

❈ also known as ” the old barn”

⚘ expat American promoter Lee Gordon was the brains behind this move into pop music, bringing out big US bands, singers and duos for concerts at Rushcutters Bay, backed by Australian support acts

Woman Behaving Outrageously: Bea Miles, Sydney Larrikin and Eccentric Sui Generis

Posted on October 30, 2021December 6, 2023 by E Curb Nottus

Biographical, Local history, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Social History

You’d be hard pressed to come up with a personality that epitomised Sydney eccentricity more than the legendary Bea Miles who died in 1973. When the subject arises even today, so many Sydneysiders of a certain vintage have a Bea Miles anecdote to tell. Either it’s a chance (and sometimes disconcerting) encounter they had as a school kid–usually on inner Sydney public transport–with the larger (and louder) than life character herself, or one recounted to them by their mother or father. Such was her profile in this city that newspapers in the Forties and Fifties claimed that Bea (or ‘Bee’ as she later insisted it be spelt) was “more widely known than the prime minister” of the day. Bea’s popularity was rooted in that honoured tradition of Australian larrikinism, the unusual thing about this was that she was female※.

Early days, the athletic Bea Miles

Born into a wealthy merchant family, young Beatrice Miles was already exhibiting the rebellious nature that made her buck against the straitjacketed proprieties of conservative Sydney (and specifically North Shore) society, when the illness befell her that would profoundly change her forever. Contracting Encephalitis Lethargica at 21, Bea over time changed physically from a tall, trim and athletic young woman to a seriously overweight, matronly-looking woman.

(Photo: Daily Tele)

Going rogue
More immediately and crucially, Bea underwent a complete personality change, becoming totally disruptive, hyper-kinetic, manic and basically uncontrollable§. When her father couldn’t cope any more with her behaviour he had her committed to an asylum, she was shuffled around between psyche facilities in Gladesville, Kenmore (Goulburn) and Callan Park. After her last escape attempt a Sydney tabloid, Smith’s Weekly, ran a story which exposed Bea’s dire plight in the psychiatric gulag of Callan Park (with sensationalised headline “Mad House Mystery of Beautiful Sydney Girl”) which helped secure her release.

No fixed address
Unable to return to the family home in St Ives, Bea had a sojourn in Sydney’s Kings Cross where she mixed happily with the locale’s Bohemian artists and writers. After this she lived rough in Sydney, finding shelter where she could – a Rushcutters Bay stormwater drain, a cave above a Sydney beach, a park bench opposite Central Station, the steps of a church rectory, etc. Ratbags author Keith Dunstan called her “very nearly the first drop-out, the first hippie”.

Enemy of authority, laws and law-enforcers, habitually disruptive public presence
Bea revelled in being controversial and confrontational, especially towards political and social authorities…abusing police, doctors and magistrates came instinctually to her, and she certainly had plenty of practice at it! By her own (not necessarily reliable) count she was “falsely convicted 195 times, fairly 100 times”…Bea defiantly refused to pay for public transport or to enter cinemas. Other offences earning her the ire of the law included swearing in public and vagrancy.

Bea Miles, literary orator
Bea loved pulling stunts and making a spectacle of herself, some she did for the heck of it—like riding a man’s push bike through the streets while wearing a formal evening dress—other stunts were to earn money after her grandmother’s inheritance allowance dried up – on the street she would hold a sign up to passing punters advertising her declamatory services, for a set “schedule of fees” she would verbatim quote passages from Shakespeare.

Rogue scholar
Under the rough edges of Bea’s (very) public persona, was a formidable intellect. She had excelled at school (Abbotsleigh Girls) and gained admission to medicine at Sydney University. In her post-illness nomadic years, the “wayward waif” as one article called her, never held a formal job and generally gave her occupation as ‘student’. Bea was a habitué of public libraries, especially the State Library in Macquarie Street¶…a life-long voracious reader and produced her own collection of writings, such as “Dictionary by a Bitch”φ.

Scourge of taxis
The stunts Bea is best remembered and most notorious for involved her with taxis and their drivers. Her propensity for refusing to pay for taxi trips and commandeering taxis to demand that they take her to vastly distant locations has gone into folklore. Legendary instances of this were the 19-day taxi trip she took to Perth (fortunately for the female cabbie involved Bea paid her £600 for the assignment), as well as trips to Broken Hill via Melbourne and Adelaide). As is the way with legendary public figures, some of her outrageous taxi exploits were more urban myths than actual events, like the tale that used to circulate of Bea taking a taxi to Broken Hill and then on approaching the outskirts of the town she was supposed to have done a runner leaving the poor hapless driver fleeced of his massive fare. Bea’s most dramatic encounter with a cab, one that did happen, saw her respond to the driver’s refusal to take her by wrenching the door completely off the taxi’s hinges (she was a big woman!). This legendary “Bea-act” landed her in Long Bay Gaol for a spell (and a rest).

Terror of trams
Tram drivers didn’t escape the attentions of Bea either…the popular press labelled her the “Terror of Trams” and on at least one occasion her antics flirted with real danger as one tram driver who refused to move until Bea paid the fare discovered. Bea, never one to back down, hijacked the tram, seizing its controls and piloted it to Bondi, even stopping to pick up passengers on route.

The Bea Miles “signature look”: The original “bag lady” apparel
Bea’s unorthodox ways made her a Sydney institution and an unmissable sight. Her irregular and unkempt mode of dress made her readily recognisable wherever she went…Bea’s regular ‘outfit’ described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a “down-at-heel uniform” of tennis shoes, white (or was it green) tennis sun visor and ever more scruffy overcoat. Always pinned to the overcoat’s lapel was a £5 note (Bea’s idea of countering any notion the police might get about arresting her for vagrancy).

Years of homeless living, sleeping rough, took their toll on Bea and in 1964 she was taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Randwick. Those last nine years of her life allowed Bea a clean, dry bed and gave the inveterate bookworm that she was joyous access to another library (borrowing an average of 14 books a week from the Randwick branch library).

Footnote: Deviating from the mainstream, inheriting some of her father’s idiosyncrasies
Despite the love-hate conflict with her father and his eventual disowning of her, Bea gained quite a number of her radical and non-conformist predispositions and beliefs from him. In his own right, wealthy businessman William J Miles was also an individualist and an eccentric. Miles was a rationalist and a secularist (Bea herself was a staunchly committed atheist❡)… from him she also got her love of Shakespeare and her anti-British imperialist/strident Australian patriotism). In the late 1930s Miles’ odd brand of political extremism found its voice in The Publicist. Funded and edited by Miles, the journal advocated fascism (curiously in tandem with Aboriginal rights), wholeheartedly embracing German Nazism and anti-Semitism𝄢. Bea endorsed his pro-Aboriginal and anti-British stand but never enunciated far-right or racist sentiments during her life, although at the end she did express some views that inferred the supremacy of the “white race”.

~~♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾♾~~

※ one of precious few non-male Aussie public larrikins, Dawn Fraser also comes to mind

§ though she still retained her sharpness of intellect afterwards

¶ until she was barred from the library in the late 1950s for being a nuisance (What, Bea?!? Never!)

φ example of an entry, “Duty: an excuse for showing unwarranted interference in somebody else’s business”

❡ there’s some dispute over whether her deathbed conversion to Catholicism was genuine or merely Bea’s way of thanking the church for taking her in off the streets in her twilight years

𝄢 it was a forerunner of the Australia First Movement. William’s dalliance with fascism prompted Cunneen’s assessment that, “with dangerous obsessions and money to spend, Miles represented an unstable element in Australian society”

ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ~ ℼ ℼ

Articles and websites consulted:

Chris Cunneen, ‘Miles, William John (1871–1942)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-william-john-7576/text13225, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.

Judith Allen, ‘Miles, Beatrice (Bea) (1902–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/miles-beatrice-bea-7573/text13219, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 27 October 2021.

Pip Wilson, ‘Bee Miles One of Sydney’s favourite individualists’, Wilson’s Almanac, 18-Feb-2012, web.archive.org

Robert Kaplan, ‘Miles From Her Father’, Quadrant, 07-Aug-2016, http://quadrant.org.au

Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

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Articles and websites consulted: