Iris Lilian Spurgeon

A Civilian, Iris died on 17th of May 1941 at the age of 21. 

Iris was born on the 26th January 1920 and was a daughter of Albert and Ellen Maud Spurgeon of 36 Old Nelson Street Lowestoft Suffolk. 

The 1939 Register shows that Iris worked as a factory hand at a wire factory in Lowestoft and subsequently she went to work at Nuneaton, Warwickshire. 

During the night of 16-17 May 1941 Nuneaton was very heavily bombed with both incendiary and high explosive bombs and 131 people were killed. The single most devastating incident in that raid was when a bomb destroyed Merrick's Shop, on Queens Road (opposite Marlborough Road). The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that Iris died at 151 Queens Road it is thought that as only one bomb is recorded as having fallen on Queens Road, then Iris must have been killed by the blast that destroyed Merrick's Shop. (See the Nuneaton and North Warwickshire Family History Society Journal July 2011 at 2011_07_Jul.pdf (nanwfhs.org.uk)

See also details of Eileen Bunn, from Lowestoft, who also died at 151 Queens Road, Nuneaton, on that fateful night.