I don't know any other way to solve this other than to decode the entities like so
var decode = function( val ) {
var el = document.createElement('textarea');
el.innerHTML = val;
return el.value;
};
Here is a function that will do that for you
and usage like this
$('div').html('<h1>Hi, Alice & Bob</h1>');
console.log( decode( $('div').html() ) );
// Result is => <h1>Hi, Alice & Bob</h1>