A national charity that began in a Middlesbrough council house is celebrating its 50th anniversary, having raised more than £300m for vital research. Julia Breen reports.

FIFTY years ago, the parents of Susan Eastwood were told she had a little-known disease called leukaemia and had six weeks to live.

The six-year-old was a vibrant, giggly little girl, the youngest child in a loving family, who liked nothing more than playing on her back garden swing and going for picnics.

Her illness and death was devastating for her parents, Hilda and David, who knew little about the disease.

To create something positive out of the tragedy, the couple and their eldest daughter, Sylvia, then 17, started raising money to fund research by selling some of Susan’s possessions.

Little did they know that those first efforts dreamed up in their home in Berwick Hills, Middlesbrough, would spiral into a £20m-a-year charity that has helped survival rates increase to more than 90 per cent.

Middlesbrough Council has adopted Leukaemia and Lymphona Research – formerly known as Leukaemia Research – as its nominated charity for the year.

Susan’s much-loved big sister, Sylvia Gaunt, is its A national charity that began in a Middlesbrough council house is celebrating its 50th anniversary, having raised more than £300m for vital research. Julia Breen reports longest-serving fundraiser, since her parents’ death in the Seventies.

She told The Northern Echo: “Susan was the best little sister you could have asked for. We shared a room and after she died, it left such a huge hole in my life.

“In those days, if you had leukaemia, it was a death sentence because there was nothing that could be done. My mum found it very hard, and wanted to do something about it, so we had a sale and auctioned Susan’s musical box with a ballerina dancing on it, and it raised £37.”

The family then hit on the idea of making fake pocket handkerchiefs for men’s suits, by sewing material to cardboard to fit into the breast pocket.

Sylvia, who has three grandchildren and five grandchildren, and lives near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, said: “We sold them for two shillings, and we sold thousands and thousands.

“They were all produced in our living room with the sewing machine going like the clappers.”

A year after Susan’s death, her family had raised £3,000 from the handkerchiefs, Christmas cards and other fundraising efforts – about £50,000 in today’s money.

By December 1961, they attended the opening of the first unit in the country dedicated to childhood leukaemia research – at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, as a result of their efforts.

Today, the charity relies entirely on voluntary donations and funds research and medical trials. It is the only UK charity solely dedicated to research into blood cancers, which affect 28,500 people a year.

To donate, go to llresearch.org or call 0207-405-0101.