 Barrington, writing five years after the fire at the unveiling of Price's panel, acknowledges in a footnote that Ayres was related to the Chandlers, but nonetheless describes her as displaying the "typical English virtues—courage, fortitude, and an unquestioning sense of duty".While George and Mary Watts and their fellow paternalist social reformers, along with the broadly sympathetic mainstream British press, portrayed Ayres as an inspirational selfless servant to her employer, others had a different view.The left-wing "Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper" complained that the lack of support for Ayres's family from the state was symbolic of poor treatment of workers as a whole.