[2] In her childhood, when in the fields at Islington, 'sporting with other children', she had a narrow escape of being killed by an arrow, shot by some unlucky archer, which 'pierced quite thorough the hat on her head'.

[3] Alice Wilkes was three times married: firstly to Henry Robinson, a member of the Brewers' Company, by whom she had six sons and five daughters; secondly to William Elkin, an alderman of London, by whom she had one daughter, Ursula, married to Sir Roger Owen (son of Thomas, and her stepson) of Condover, Shropshire ; and thirdly to the judge Thomas Owen.

On 6 June 1608, she obtained licence to purchase at Islington and Clerkenwell eleven acres of ground, whereon to erect a hospital for ten poor widows, and to vest the same and other lands, to the value of £40 a year, in the Brewers' Company.

Here she erected a school, free chapel, and almshouses, on the east side of St. John Street Road, which stood till 1841.

On 14 August 1878, a new scheme obtained the royal assent, by which the school of Alice Owen was expanded into two — one for about three hundred boys, and the other for the like number of girls.