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 the show for nearly twenty-two years. The character of Pauline was a cornerstone of "EastEnders"; the lynchpin of the Fowler/Beale family around whom the soap was originally structured. At the beginning of the serial in 1985, Pauline was a 40-year-old married mother with two teenage children, Mark and Michelle, and another child on the way. The fictional history of her younger years has been told via behind-the-scenes books such as "EastEnders: The Inside Story", and the second tie-in novel by Hugh Miller, "Swings and Roundabouts", which explains that Pauline was born and raised at 45 Albert Square, where she lived