Postman’s Park is a quiet public garden tucked behind the church of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate within the City of London. Visitors to the park can pause and reflect upon the G.F. Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, a collection of more than fifty memorial plaques commemorating the heroic deeds of ordinary people who gave their lives trying to save others. There’s Elizabeth Boxall, for instance, who died aged 17 in 1888, ‘of injuries received trying to save a child from a runaway horse’ and Soloman Galaman, who died aged 11 in 1901 after saving his little brother from being run over in the street…’Mother I saved him but could not save myself’. The memorial was created in 1887 by Victorian artist G.F.Watts to mark Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Watts believed that stories of heroism could ‘uplift and stimulate and should therefore be commemorated.’ In the 2004 film ‘Closer’, Postman’s Park is featured as a meeting point for actors Jude Law and Natalie Portman. In an early scene, Portman’s character actually chooses her pseudonym, ‘Alice Ayers’, from one of the memorial plaques: ‘Alice Ayers, daughter of a bricklayer’s labourer, who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street Borough, at the cost of her own young life, April 24 1885’.
- G.F. Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice
- Postman’s Park
- Edward St, London EC1A 7BX
- www.wattsgallery.org.uk