EastEnders created the Beale and Fowler family, drawing on his own background. His mother, Ethel Holland, was one of four sisters raised in Walthamstow. Her eldest sister, Lou, had married a man named Albert Beale and had two children, named Peter and Pauline. These family members were the basis for Lou Beale, Pete Beale and Pauline Fowler. Holland also created Pauline's unemployed husband Arthur Fowler, their children Mark Fowler and Michelle Fowler, Pete's wife Kathy Beale and their son Ian Beale. Smith used her personal memories of East End residents she met when researching Victorian squares. Ethel Skinner was based on
Pauline Fowler transference of the family's matriarchal role from Lou to Pauline. Wendy Richard has indicated that both she and show creator, Julia Smith, had always intended for Pauline to become like her mother, and former "EastEnders" executive producer John Yorke has commented on the importance of the lineage between the two characters: "[Pauline] endures, stoically and heroically, whatever life may throw at her, just as her mother did before her. This sense of lineage is vitally important, too. Pauline has been in the show since its start and was handed the role of matriarch on Lou Beale's death." In the first