Victims of the London Blitz

Laurie Manton
2 min readJul 14, 2023

Two children were killed by a German bomb

This in-memoriam card commemorates the death of two children killed in the London Blitz. Their home was hit by a bomb dropped by a German aircraft. Jean (10) and Barbara (5) Strong died at 9 Douglas Road, Tolworth on 28 July 1941. Their parents survived. Jean and Barbara are buried in Surbiton Cemetery.

Not everyone realises that the Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s Debt of Honour registers includes the names of the Civilian War Dead and a downloadable commemorative certificate is available. I have included them here. Of the many civilians of the Commonwealth whose deaths were due to enemy action in the 1939–1945 War, the names of some 67,092 are commemorated in the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour, located near St George’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, London.

Records tell me that Ronald Frederick Archer (8) died at the same address that day. He was the son of Driver Donald Frederick Archer, Royal Engineers and Violet Lucy Archer.

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Laurie Manton

I’m a longtime student of funerary architecture photographing headstones and memorials that tell a story. Our Social History is written on those stones