Alice Ayres
Alice Ayres was an English nursemaid honoured for her bravery in rescuing the children in her care from a house fire. Ayres was a household assistant and nursemaid to the family of her brother-in-law and sister, Henry and Mary Ann Chandler. The Chandlers owned an oil and paint shop in Union Street, Southwark, then just south of London, and Ayres lived with the family above the shop. In 1885, a fire broke out in the shop, and Ayres rescued three of her nieces from the burning building, before falling from a window and suffering fatal injury.
Britain, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, experienced a period of great social change in which the rapidly growing news media paid increasing attention to the activities of the poorer classes. The manner of Ayres's death caused great public interest, with large numbers of people attending her funeral and contributing to the funding of a memorial. Shortly after her death, she underwent what has been described as a "secular canonisation", being widely depicted in popular culture and, although very little was known about her life, widely cited as a role model. Various social and political movements promoted Ayres as an example of the values held by their particular movement. The circumstances of her death were distorted to give the impression that she was an employee willing to die for the sake of her employer's family, rather than for children to whom she was closely related. In 1902, her name was added to the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice and in 1936 a street near the scene of the fire was renamed Ayres Street in her honour.
The case of Alice Ayres came to renewed public notice with the release of Patrick Marber's 1997 play Closer, and the 2004 film based on it. An important element of the plot revolves around a central character who fabricates her identity based on the description of Ayres on the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, with some of the film's scenes shot around the memorial.
Work with the Chandler family
Alice Ayres was born into a large family in 1859, the seventh of ten children of a labourer, John Ayres. In December 1877, her sister Mary Ann married an oil and paint dealer, Henry Chandler. Chandler owned a shop at 194 Union Street in Southwark, about south of the present-day Tate Modern.In 1881, Ayres worked as a household assistant to Edward Woakes, a doctor specialising in ear and throat disorders. By 1885, she had become a household assistant and nursemaid to the Chandlers, living with the family. After her death, Ayres was described by a local resident as "not one of your fast sort—gentle and quiet-spoke, and always busy about her work". Another neighbour told the press that "no merry making, no excursion, no family festivity could tempt her from her self-imposed duties. The children must be bathed and put to bed, the clothes must be mended, the rooms must be 'tidied up', the cloth must be laid, the supper carefully prepared, before Alice would dream of setting forth on her own pleasures".
Union Street fire
The Chandlers' shop at Union Street, as depicted in a contemporary newspaper illustration, occupied the corner premises of a building of three storeys. The family lived above the shop, with Henry and Mary Ann Chandler sleeping in one bedroom with their six-year-old son Henry, and Ayres sharing a room on the second floor with her nieces, five-year-old Edith, four-year-old Ellen and three-year-old Elizabeth. On the night of 1885, fire broke out in the oil and paint shop, trapping the family upstairs. Gunpowder and casks of oil were stored in the lower floors of the building, causing the flames to spread rapidly. Although the shop was near the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade and the emergency services were quickly on scene, by the time the fire engine arrived intense flames were coming from the lower windows, making it impossible for the fire brigade to position ladders. Meanwhile, Ayres, wearing only a nightdress, had tried to reach her sister but was unable to get to her through the smoke. The crowd that had gathered outside the building were shouting to Ayres to jump. Instead she returned to the room she shared with the three young girls and threw a mattress out of the window, carefully dropping Edith onto it. Despite further calls from below to jump and save herself, she left the window and returned carrying Ellen. Ellen clung to Ayres and refused to be dropped, but Ayres threw her out of the building, and the child was caught by a member of the crowd. Ayres went back into the smoke a third time and returned carrying badly injured Elizabeth, whom she dropped safely onto the mattress.After rescuing the three girls, Ayres tried to jump herself, but overcome by smoke inhalation, fell limply from the window, striking the projecting shop sign. She missed the mattress and the crowd below and fell onto the pavement, suffering spinal injuries. Ayres was rushed to nearby Guy's Hospital where, because of the public interest that her story excited, hourly bulletins were issued about her health and Queen Victoria sent a lady-in-waiting to enquire after her condition.
The oil and paint stored in the shop caused the fire to burn out of control, and when the fire services were eventually able to enter the premises the rest of the family were found dead. The body of Henry Chandler was found on the staircase, still clutching a locked strongbox filled with the shop's takings, while the badly burnt remains of Mary Ann Chandler were found lying next to a first floor window, the body of six-year-old Henry by her side. Ayres's condition deteriorated and she died in Guy's Hospital on 1885. Her last words were reported as "I tried my best and could try no more". Elizabeth, the last of the children to be rescued, had suffered severe burns to her legs and died shortly after Ayres.
Funeral
Ayres's body was not taken to Guy's Hospital's mortuary, but was laid in a room set aside for her. The estimated value of the floral tributes came to over £1,000. Ayres was posthumously recognised by the Metropolitan Board of Works-controlled Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire, who awarded her father John Ayres a sum of 10 guineas in her honour. A memorial service for Ayres at St Saviour's Church attracted such a large crowd that mourners were turned away due to lack of standing room, while a collection taken at the memorial service comprised 951 coins, totalling over £7. Ayres was given a large public funeral, attended by over 10,000 mourners. Her coffin was carried from her parents' house to her grave in Isleworth Cemetery by a team of 16 firemen, relieving each other in sets of four. The church service was attended by a group of 20 girls, dressed in white, from the village school that Ayres had attended. It had been planned that the girls should follow the coffin to the graveside and sing, but a severe hailstorm prevented this.Henry and Mary Ann Chandler were buried in Lambeth Cemetery along with the two children who had died in the fire. Edith and Ellen Chandler were accepted by the Orphan Working School in Kentish Town and trained as domestic servants.
Memorial
Shortly after the fire it was decided to erect a monument to Ayres, to be funded by public subscription, and by August 1885 the fund had raised over £100. On 1885 work began on the memorial. The monument was erected above her grave in Isleworth Cemetery, and was of an Egyptian design inspired by Cleopatra's Needle, which had been raised in central London in 1878. It took the form of a solid red granite obelisk, and is still today the tallest grave marker in the cemetery. On the front of the obelisk is inscribed:The right hand side of the monument lists the ten members of the Alice Ayres Memorial Committee, chaired by Rev H. W. P. Richards. The Union Street fire and Ayres's rescue of the children caused great public interest from the outset, and the fire, Ayres's death and funeral, and the fundraising for and erection of the memorial were all reported in detail in the local and national press and throughout the British Empire.
"A secular canonisation"
The British government had traditionally paid little attention to the poor, but in the wake of the Industrial Revolution attitudes towards the accomplishments of the lower classes were changing. The growth of the railways, the mechanisation of agriculture and the need for labour in the new inner-city factories had broken the traditional feudal economy and caused the rapid growth of cities, while increasing literacy rates led to a greater interest in the media and current affairs among ordinary workers. In 1856, the first military honour for bravery open to all ranks, the Victoria Cross, had been instituted, while in 1866, the Albert Medal, the first official honour open to civilians of all classes, was introduced. Additionally, a number of private and charitable organisations dedicated to lifesaving, most prominently the Royal Humane Society and Royal National Lifeboat Institution, were increasing in activity and prominence, and gave awards and medals as a means of publicising their activities and lifesaving advice.Painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts and his second wife, designer and artist Mary Fraser Tytler, had long been advocates of the idea of art as a force for social change, and of the principle that narratives of great deeds would provide guidance to address the serious social problems of British cities. Watts had recently painted a series of portraits of leading figures he considered to be a positive social influence, the "Hall of Fame", which was donated to the National Portrait Gallery; since at least 1866 he had proposed as a companion piece a monument to "unknown worth", celebrating the bravery of ordinary people.
On 5 September 1887, a letter was published in The Times from Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria by means of collecting and commemorating "a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life". He cited the death of Alice Ayres as an example of the type of event he proposed to commemorate, and included in his letter a distorted account of Ayres's actions during the Union Street fire.
Watts had originally proposed that the monument take the form of a colossal bronze figure, but by 1887 was proposing that the memorial take the form of "a kind of Campo Santo", consisting of a covered way and marble wall inscribed with the names of everyday heroes, to be built in Hyde Park. Watts's suggestion was not taken up, leading Watts to comment that "if I had proposed a race course round Hyde Park, there would have been plenty of sympathisers". However, his high-profile lobbying further raised the already high public awareness of the death of Alice Ayres.