Ordinary hero who saved our faith in humanity
There is in Postman’s Park in the City of London a humble yet remarkable memorial. It’s a small walkway that houses 54 elegantly inscribed ceramic tablets, decorated in the Art Nouveau style of the late-1800s.
each commemorates an act of selfless bravery by a member of the public, one that ultimately cost them their life.
It was the idea of George Watts, a painter and sculptor who was inspired by the story of Alice Ayres, a bricklayer’s daughter who, in 1885, ‘by intrepid conduct saved three children from a burning house in Union Street, Borough, at the cost of her own young life’.
All the plaques tell similar stories, seemingly ordinary people who ended up doing something extraordinary out of bravery, losing their own life in the process.
A surprising number of them record people who died trying to save others from drowning, including one G. Garnish, a young clergyman ‘ who lost his life endeavouring to rescue a stranger from drowning at Putney’ in 1885.
More than a century later, on Saturday night, another name was added to that roll- call of gentle, tragic heroism: 20-year- old Jimi Olubunmi-Adewole, who died as he tried to save a woman — a total stranger — from the Thames at London Bridge.
HEARING her cries, he and another man dived into the river to rescue her. The woman and the other man were eventually picked up by the Metropolitan Police’s marine unit — but they couldn’t find Jimi.
A search operation was launched, and his body was found several hours later.
A campaign has now been launched to add Jimi to the memorial in Postman’s Park.
There is no question in my mind that he deserves to be included. Because people like him don’t just save one person; they save all of us — spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
Think of Darryn Frost, a civil servant at the Ministry of Justice, who, as Usman Khan launched his knife attack in Fishmongers’ hall in 2019, grabbed a narwhal tusk off the wall and pursued the terrorist across London Bridge, wielding it like a broadsword with no thought for his own safety.
Or Patrick hutchinson, a fiftysomething fitness fanatic, father and grandfather, who strode into the crowd at a Black Lives Matter march last summer to emerge with an injured Bryn Male — a retired transport police officer and Millwall FC fan — slung over his shoulder.
Male and his mates had been drinking and stirring up trouble at the protest, but that didn’t matter to Mr hutchinson, who said later: ‘Some people have asked me why I bothered saving him, and I understand their frustration. But my natural instinct is to protect the vulnerable.’
It’s people like this, a rare and special breed, who restore our faith in the power and goodness of the human heart. And that is something that cannot help but inspire us.
What Jimi Olubunmi-Adewole did as he walked home from work with his friend, led to tragedy. But it came from a place of true goodness. his bravery and moral altruism shine like a beacon in the dark.
Such selflessness, such nobility of instinct, are not virtues that seem common in the modern age, and yet this young man clearly possessed them both.
I can’t even begin to imagine the grief his parents must be feeling. But the very least they deserve is to see his name honoured alongside others like him. And to know that in centuries to come, his sacrifice — like all those others — will be remembered.