Alice started life at 19 Frances Street in Lambeth, the third daughter of John Hayes and Alice Keefe. Her parents both died young - her father at the age of 30 as the result of a fall and her mother at 38 of kidney disease. It is not clear how Alice and her sisters survived in the years following their mother’s death (Alice was only 11 at the time) but on Christmas Day, 1897, she married Charles Frederick Balch in St Mary’s Church in Lambeth.

Over the following 16 years, Charles and Alice had nine children, of whom seven survived to adulthood. Elizabeth died as a baby in 1906 and John died at the age of 15 in 1917. Alice had his photograph on her wall for the rest of her life. Alice’s husband Charles died in 1922 in Kent - likely on a hop-picking holiday with the family - and she never re-married.

When World War ll began on 1 September 1939, life drastically changed for Londoners. While men went off to fight, women planted gardens, volunteered with the Red Cross or went to work in munitions factories. Food rationing began, blackout rules had to be strictly followed, and millions of children, including young Stephanie Balch, were evacuated out of the city for their safety. But the most terrifying aspect of the war for Londoners was the Blitz - nine months of relentless bombing by German forces in 1940-1941. Night after night, bombs rained down - during one period in late 1940, London was bombed on 56 of 57 days. More than 20,000 Londoners were killed during the Blitz and more than a million homes damaged or destroyed. It was a devastating time and it affected Londoners for decades to come.

By the time the war broke out, all but one of the Balch children had grown and moved away, leaving just Alice and her daughter, also called Alice, in the family home. At night when the air raid siren sounded, the two of them would go down to the shelter to escape the bombs. Alice was especially terrified of the bombs, and even after the Blitz was over and bombing raids became much less frequent, she often chose to sleep in the shelter. On the night of 29 November 1943, Alice went to bed in her flat, but woke to the sound of an air raid siren. She had a blinding headache. and her daughter wanted her to stay in bed, but Alice insisted on going to the shelter. On the way down the stairs, Alice collapsed, leaving her daughter with the impossible choice of leaving her mother unconscious and alone on the stairs while she ran for help, or staying by her mother’s side, as she had done all her life. St Giles’ Hospital was only a block from their home, but sadly, young Alice could not get her mother there in time, and Alice died that night of a cerebral hemorrhage.