This combined biography brings together the lives of George Albert Gurr and his wife Katie Matilda Jane (née Willis) Gurr, whose story links Edwardian Folkestone family life with the civilian experience of the Second World War.
George Albert Gurr, Mayor of Folkestone, and his wife Katie Matilda Jane Gurr were both killed when a parachute mine fell on Morehall Avenue in the early hours of 29 May 1941.
Family reports, Civilian War Dead records, and local Folkestone sources
Family Origins
Katie Matilda Jane Willis was born before 3 April 1881 at Cheriton, near Folkestone, Kent, the daughter of George Robert Willis and Jane Anne Page. In the 1881 census she was living at 7 Marshall Street, Folkestone, and by 1891 she was at Brickfield Cottages, Black Bull Road, where she was recorded as a scholar.[file:216] By 1901 she was working as a laundry maid and living at 50 Black Bull Road, a background that reflects the working households of late Victorian and Edwardian Folkestone.
George Albert Gurr was born on 25 March 1881 in Folkestone, the son of Albert and Charlotte Gurr, and was baptised there on 13 December 1881. He was living with his family in Charlotte Street in 1891 and remained associated with 5 Charlotte Street into early adult life. His early occupations, first as a clerk and later as a cashier, indicate a steady rise into respectable commercial and administrative work within the town.
Marriage and Domestic Life
George Albert Gurr and Katie Matilda Jane Willis married on 28 February 1906 at the Primitive Methodist Church, Dover Street, Folkestone. A detailed newspaper report preserved in both family files described George as the eldest son of Mr and Mrs A. Gurr of 5 Charlotte Street and Katie as the daughter of Mr G. Willis and the late Mrs Willis of 50 Black Bull Road; it also noted the large congregation, the choir’s silver cruet gift, and a reception held at Black Bull Road. Their honeymoon was spent at Woolwich, and the account gives a vivid glimpse of a respectable chapel wedding in Edwardian Kent.
The couple had one daughter, Constance Edith Gurr, and the 1911 census recorded that Katie had borne one child, who was then still living. In 1911 they were living at 2 Albert Road, Folkestone, where George worked as a cashier. The 1921 census still places them at 2 Albert Road, with George serving as assistant secretary of the Co‑operative Society in Folkestone and Katie occupied with home duties.
George Albert Gurr in Public Life
By the inter-war years George had become a prominent public figure in Folkestone. The 1939 Register records him at 30 Morehall Avenue, employed as secretary of a friendly society, and the family report states that at the time of his death he was serving as Mayor of Folkestone. A local history journal notes that he had become Folkestone’s youngest mayor when elected in May 1941, only seventeen days before he and Katie were killed.
His civic prominence helps explain why local memory of the raid remained especially strong. Contemporary and retrospective Folkestone sources specifically refer to the deaths of the Mayor and Mayoress in the Morehall Avenue attack, placing the Gurrs among the best-remembered local civilian casualties of the war. George’s life therefore bridges family history and municipal history, linking the domestic record of census and probate with the public record of wartime leadership.
Wartime Context: Civilian War Dead
Neither George nor Katie died as serving members of the armed forces; both are recorded under the Civilian War Dead register. In this case, the “military unit” at the time of death is therefore best understood as the Civilian War Dead category administered through the wartime system of national remembrance rather than a regiment, squadron, or ship. Their Commonwealth War Graves Commission entries recognise them as civilian casualties of enemy action, a status created to commemorate those killed at home through bombing and related wartime incidents.