Alice Ayres (12 September 1859 – 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'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 (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 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.