Alice Ayres (12 September 1859 – 26 April 1885) 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 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' 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 key scenes shot around the memorial.
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 (older than Alice by eleven years) married an oil and paint dealer, Henry Chandler. Chandler owned a shop at 194 Union Street in Southwark, about 400 yards (370 m) 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".
The Chandler's 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 24 April 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 26 April 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.
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 (about £94,000 as of 2015). Ayres was posthumously recognised by the Metropolitan Board of Works-controlled Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire (today the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire), who awarded her father John Ayres a sum of 10 guineas (about £990 as of 2015) in her honour. A memorial service for Ayres at St Saviour's Church (now Southwark Cathedral) 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.
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 (about £9,000 as of 2015). On 15 August 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 14-foot (4.3 m) solid red granite obelisk, and is still today the tallest grave marker in the cemetery. On the front of the obelisk is inscribed
Sacred to the memory of ALICE AYRES, aged 26 years, who met her death through a fire which occurred in Union Street, Borough, the 24th of April, 1885 A.D.
Amidst the sudden terrors of the conflagration, with true courage and judgement, she heroically rescued the children committed to her charge. To save them, she three times braved the flames; at last, leaping from the burning house, she sustained injuries from the effects of which she died on April 26th 1885.
This memorial was erected by public subscription to commemorate a noble act of unselfish courage.
"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
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.
In 1936 the new Labour administration of the London County Council renamed White Cross Street, near the site of the Red Cross Hall and the scene of the Union Street fire, to Ayres Street in tribute to Alice Ayres, a name it retains today. The Chandlers' house at 194 Union Street no longer stands, and the site is occupied by part of the Union House office complex; immediately opposite the site of the fire is the present-day headquarters of the London Fire Brigade.
Alice Ayres came to renewed public notice with the release of the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber and the 2004 BAFTA Award- and Golden Globe-winning film Closer based on it starring Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen. A key plot element revolves around the memorial tablet to Ayres in Postman's Park, in which it is revealed that the character Jane Jones (played by Portman in the film), who calls herself Alice Ayres for most of the story, has in fact fabricated her identity based on the tablet on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, which she reads at the time of her first meeting with Dan Woolf (played by Jude Law in the film) at the beginning of the action. The park, and the memorial to Ayres, feature prominently in the opening and closing scenes of the film.