Bee Miles (1902-1973)

Bee (Beatrice) Miles (1902–1973) was one of Sydney’s best-known street identities.  She was famous for reciting Shakespeare for coin donations, her spectacular run-ins with taxi drivers and legendary long-distance cab rides and countless court appearances.  However, she was a voracious reader, highly intelligent and in popular culture has become an emblem of Sydney eccentricity and the subject of portraits, a stage musical, biography and fictionalised in literature and film.

I received a request for information of family associations with Strathfield. Though I can not find any references to Miles herself being associated with Strathfield, her grandmother Ellen Miles (née Bielinski) (1842-1932) lived in Albyn Road Strathfield in the late stages of her life.  The following article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 29 January 1932, page 15

Mrs. Ellen Miles, who died at her residence in Albyn-road, Strathfield, on Saturday, was formerly one of the best-known singers in Sydney.

She was born at Brentford, Middlesex, England, in 1842, and came to Australia as a girl. She married Mr. W. J. Cordner, at the time Sydney’s chief organist and conductor. Under his tuition, his young wife developed a fine contralto voice, and was Sydney’s chief resident contralto singer during the sixties and seventies. Their home was a centre for all visiting musicians.

Among Mrs. Cordner’s pupils were John D. Delany and the Gehdes. Among her early friends was Mrs. Stewart, and her famous daughter, the late Nellie Stewart, whom she often nursed as a baby; and Nellie Stewart’s step-sisters, Maggie and Doole Guerin.

Some years after Mr. Cordner’s death his widow married Mr. J. B. C. Miles, a well-known accountant. He died in 1907, and Mrs. Miles had lived in retirement since. She was well known for her charity. She is survived by one son, Mr. W. Miles.  The funeral took place at Rookwood Cemetery on Monday.

Ellen Miles was born Ellen Munton Bielinski in England in 1842, the daughter of Jean Bielinski and Elizabeth Munton.  After the death of her first husband, William Cordner in 1870,  she married John Balfour Clement Miles (1845-1907) in 1871. They had one son, William Miles, who married Maria Binnington. William was the father of Beatrice Miles, known as Bea or Bee. There is a family grave at Rookwood Cemetery where Ellen and John Miles are buried, and William and Maria Miles ashes are interred. Bea Miles’s ashes are also interred at the family grave.

Photo credit – Portrait of Bee Miles, c.1940-1946, State Library of New South Wales (PXE 721 no. 40)