Portal:United Kingdom/Featured biography/21

Alice Ayres (1859–1885) was an English 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 Southwark, and Ayres lived with them above the shop. In 1885, fire broke out in the shop and Ayres rescued three of her nieces from the burning building but fatally injured herself. Ayres died during a period of great social change in Britain in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, in which a rapidly growing media was paying increasing attention to the activities of the poorer classes. The manner of her death caused great public interest, and large numbers of people attended her funeral and contributed to the funding of a memorial. She then underwent a "secular canonisation" and became widely depicted in the popular culture of the period. 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. She was widely cited as a role model, and was promoted as an example of the values held by various social and political movements. 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. (Full article...)