BRITAIN’S KINDEST PLUMBER
No charge, he says after fixing cancer OAP’s boiler
‘I just burst into tears’
WHEN plumber James Anderson finished repairing the boiler of a 91-yearold woman with leukaemia he didn’t think twice.
He sent a bill charging her the princely sum of ‘£0’ accompanied by a note reading: ‘No charge for this lady under any circumstances. We will be available 24 hours to help her and keep her as comfortable as possible.’
Now his customer’s daughter has praised Mr Anderson’s kindness – saying his invoice made her ‘burst into tears’.
Her comments were quickly picked up online, with some social media users saying it gave them ‘hope for humanity’. Yesterday Mr Anderson, 52, said he was stunned by the attention, but insisted he couldn’t have acted any other way.
‘When I first visited the lady, she was just lying on a bed chair in her living room and she didn’t look too well,’ the father-of-five said. ‘I had to help and I can’t not do it for free.’
He was first called to the pensioner, who has acute leukaemia, on September 8 and visited twice a day to make sure she was warm enough before a replacement part arrived. The repairs would have cost £468.
He said the woman’s daughter was ‘absolutely over the moon and amazed’, adding: ‘I told her not to worry about her mum and that we’d look after any work that needed doing.
‘I don’t want any person who is elderly and disabled in this country, in this day and age, to die or suffer because of a cold home or a lack of funding to repair the boiler.’
Christine Rowlands, the daughter of his customer, told the Manchester Evening News: ‘I just burst into tears when I read the email from James. It was just so kind.
‘I’d called him out on the Sunday because water was pouring from a pipe and there was a problem with the boiler at my mum’s house. I couldn’t find the stop tap.’
She added: ‘I was panicking because I had no cash and the cash machine wasn’t working, but he said not to worry.’
Mr Anderson, from Burnley, says he has helped thousands of elderly and vulnerable people through his not-for-profit company Depher.
He set it up two years ago after shutting down his private firm. He relies on donations – including a £2,000 grant from the Duchy of Lancaster – to pay for the work, but claims he has still built up debts of around £8,000.
He said: ‘A lot of people close to me ask: Why are you getting yourself in to debt? Why are you doing this? To me, debt is debt... I would rather owe some money to somebody and another person be alive and safe. It’s an ethos that’s in my heart and it will always stay there.’
He added: ‘It’s not difficult to be nice, is it? At the end of the day, we’re all part of the same family living on a rock in space.
‘If we don’t look after each other, it’s a very sad place that we live.’ He says he was inspired to fix pipes and boilers for vulnerable customers for free or at a discounted price after seeing an elderly man poorly treated by another engineer.
Now he’s hoping to take Depher – which stands for ‘Disabled and Elderly Plumbing and Heating Emergency Response’ – country-wide. While he believes finding other plumbers to help won’t be a problem, the logistics of operating in other cities could be an obstacle.
He said: ‘I’ve spoken to quite a few engineers around the country and they’re all for it... it’s just getting the funding.’
Speaking about his newfound online fame, he added: ‘We didn’t expect it... It’s been everywhere.’