Solicitor David Strachan, dedicated to helping people with legal problems, has died

Published: 15th April, 2011
by PETER GRUNER

SOLICITOR David Strachan, who devoted the later part of his life to helping poor people with their legal problems at East End support centre Toynbee Hall, has died aged 72.

David, who was single, lived in Compton Road, Canonbury, for more than 50 years and until his retirement worked as a solicitor specialising in property at Linklaters and Paines in the City.

Towards the end of his time at Linklaters, he was introduced to Toynbee Hall Legal Advice Centre in Commercial Road.

David devoted the next 20 or so years to helping people with legal problems of all kinds. 

He would often work with ex-Tory minister John Profumo, a long-standing volunteer at the centre.

A friend and ex-colleague, Tim Bullimore, said that although David practised as a property lawyer, he turned his hand to providing advice on everything from pension disputes to immigration.

Mr Bullimore added: “David was always especially interested in the housing problems experienced by many of those living in the most deprived areas of east London.

“He would often visit people’s current dwellings to get a better handle on a dispute.”

Having been honorary organiser of the Legal Advice 

Centre for many years, David was awarded the Badge of the Order of Mercy by the League of Mercy in 2007, in recognition of the huge amount of time and effort he devoted to helping those less fortunate than himself.

Henry Hood, a trustee at Toynbee Hall and former legal volunteer, summed up David’s contribution to the service: “He was a man without any airs and graces, but whose modesty masked an intellect to master areas of law quite outside his usual practice, the courage to use that knowledge in tribunals often quite new to 

him and an inexhaustible willingness to help those less fortunate, whatever the inconvenience to himself.”

His health began to fail last year and he was diagnosed as suffering from motor neurone disease earlier this year. He died at the National Hospital for Neurology in Bloomsbury on March 20.

David grew up in Belfast, where his father held a top managerial position at shipbuilders Harland and Wolff.

After school in England and prior to his degree at Christ Church, Oxford, David did his national service in the Navy, where he put his love of ships and maps to good use and rose to the rank of sub-lieutenant.

He moved to his flat in the then newly-built block on the east side of Compton Road in 1960.

His funeral was held at St James’ Church, in Prebend Street, on March 30.