A Sad Tale of Heroism

Union Street in Southwark is little changed from the late 19th century, although there were many hop warehouses that have now dissapeared situated behind the rows of shop premises. However, the name has changed, as this section was known as Queen Street and laid out around 1747 to provide better access to the Greyhound coaching inn which sat further along the street. It was amalgamated along with several other streets into Union Street around 1813, which is why it gets the name.

There’s a triangular area in the middle of the street known as flat iron square, a modern construct due to its shape, but it was once the location of a stone masons yard in the 1700s. Following development of the area it transformed itself it a small public garden and then in the 19th century it became the site of a drinking fountain and public toilet, now the cafe.

The local pub, the Rose and Crown has sat on the site since the early 1800s when it was run by a Thomas Swift.

The area came to prominence in 1885 due to the case of Alice Ayres, a twenty five year old Governess. She looked after the children of her sister Mary Ann and her husband John Chandler, who owned a oil and paint shop here.
The family lived above the shop, with Henry and Mary Ann 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.

In the small hours of 24 April 1885, fire broke out in the shop below, trapping the family upstairs, due to the nature of the stock the flames spread rapidly. The shop was near the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade who were quickly on scene, but by the time the fire engine arrived the flames and heat coming from the shop made it impossible for the fire brigade to position ladders to attempt a rescue.

Alice, having been woken by the blaze tried to get to her sister in the room upstairs but was thwarted by the thick smoke. Returning to her room she threw a mattress out of the window and proceeded to drop each of the three girls in turn to the pavement below. The crowd of onlookers implored her to jump, but she again tried to rescue her sister without success and had to return to the window.

It appears that she was overcome by the thick smoke and instead of jumping fell from the window hitting her head on the shop sign on the way down and missing the mattress hit the pavement.
Alice 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.

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 a day later. 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.

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.

Alice’s body was later taken to Magdala Terrace in Isleworth, the home of her parents, before the journey to Isleworth cemetery. It is estimated that 10,000 onlookers lined the three quarter mile route to watch her coffin go past, carried by sixteen fireman from the Southwark section, who in fours took turns in shouldering the coffin.  On Monday 2nd May 1885 she was laid to rest in a public service in a grave with a small plain headstone. It was arranged that 20 young girls all dressed in white, pupils at the school Alice had once attended should sing a hymn by the graveside, but a violent hailstorm curtailed any further activity after the coffin had been lowered.

At the time a public subscription campaign had been started to raise enough money to purchase a memorial to Alice. and by August 1885 the fund had raised over £100, about £14,000 today. The monument was of an Egyptian design inspired by Cleopatra’s Needle, which had been raised in central London a few years earlier. 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.

Alice is also memorialised on the roll of honour to self sacrifice in Postman’s Park near St Paul’s Cathedral.

There’s a bit of a postscript to the story. Alice and let’s not forget her sister Mary Anne’s deaths impacted heavily on their parents John and Mary and within a couple of years John had died. Mary could probably have believe that in her twilight years she would be able to count on her daughters to provide for her. However with them gone she was left to fend for herself as described in several newspapers.

“Six or seven years ago not only England but the whole English-speaking race was moved to tears and admiration by the noble heroism of a servant girl in the Borough, named Alice Ayres, who saved three of her master’s children from death by fire, and lost her own life in the act. But the practical reward of this noble sacrifice is this: Old Mrs Ayres, a respectable old woman of 72, having lost the support of her daughter, has in her old age become a pauper, and has been admitted to Brentford Workhouse, where the is engaged in the usual light and lively pauper duties of floor-scrubbing and mangling.“

There was much hand wringing and several papers trumpeted that it was a disgrace, but it appears that not much was done to help and Mary died in the Workhouse