Drinkers have raised pints of cash for a children’s hospice with fundraisers at two pubs within 24 hours in London’s East End. Customers at Whitechapel’s Dog & Truck, which reopened in Backchurch Lane after a £150,000 refit last week, put £250 into the pot for the Richard House hospice at Beckton.
The hospice, which needs £3 million to care for children with life-limiting or life-threatening illness, attracts support from many famous people including TV’s DIY guru Tommy Walsh (pictured above), who comes from east London, and Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife Samantha.
The next night, ex-Army driver Derek Ellerbeck raised more than £1,000 for the hospice with a right old cockney knees-up when he hired Stepney’s Dean Swift pub.
The shindig was in memory of his partner Jackie Woolf, a Petticoat Lane market trader who died 10 years ago from cancer, aged 47.
“It was something to remember Jackie on the 10th anniversary of her passing, as so many people knew her,” Derek told the East London Advertiser.
“The children’s hospice sadly doesn’t have many anniversaries to look forward to, so I thought it would be a gesture to raise some money for them.”
The couple lived in Cable Street, a few minutes from the pub, where Derek, now 65, still lives.
Jackie worked as a finisher in the East End’s once-vibrant clothing trade when she left Stepney’s Bishop Challoner Collegiate School at 16, before running a market stall in Petticoat Lane.
Derek, who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles in the early 1970s, has previously held charity nights which made £2,000 for another hospice, St Francis at Havering-atte-Bower, near Romford, where Jackie died.
Meanwhile, the reopened Dog & Truck, which passed the hat round for Richard House, has gone back to serving up traditional pub grub.
Guv’nor Dan Martin said: “We’re focusing on traditional British classic pies. Many pubs these days dish out ‘nouveau cuisine’, but you can’t beat a good pie and a beer.”
He is dishing up a variety of 12 pies to go with craft beers from Bermondsey and draught local ales.
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