Tabloid newspapers carried fresh articles criticising charities for pressuring elderly people this weekend, including cases of a woman who received 15,000 items of direct mail, and a man on £122 a week asked to donate £100,000.

Articles have appeared in The Sun on Sunday, Mirror, Express and Daily Mail over the weekend, all focusing on the large amount of direct mail received by individuals, particularly the more vulnerable.

Pensioner asked for £100,000

The Children’s Society has apologised after an 80-year-old pensioner received two letters from the charity in one week asking him to give £100,000, despite living on a £122-a-week pension.

After the article appeared in the Sun on Sunday, The Children’s Society’s chief executive, Matthew Reed, released a statement saying the charity “wholeheartedly apologised” that some individuals were “wrongly approached” as part of a recent high-value fundraising campaign.

He said: “We launched this fundraising initiative in March to raise money to pay for more frontline project workers supporting some of the country’s most vulnerable children. We worked together with an agency to identify potential donors with the ability to generously support our work. Unfortunately a number of people were contacted who we had never intended to include.

“As soon as issues came to light we immediately launched an investigation about what went wrong with this particular initiative. We are very committed to responding to every complaint we have received.

“We are very sorry that wrongly selected individuals have been inconvenienced or distressed and are doing everything we can to make sure this does not happen in the future.”

Elderly lady 'received 15,000 letters'

An article in the Mirror featured an 84-year-old woman who claims she has received 15,000 letters from charities with requests for donations. She told the paper that she began receiving these letters in 2001 following setting up payments of £3 a month to two charities.

This story has now appeared in several other tabloid publications.

The recent spate of articles criticising charities’ fundraising practices follows reports last month that a 92-year-old woman, Olive Cooke, who is believed to have committed suicide, had felt overwhelmed by the number of telephone calls and letters she had received from charities asking for donations.

Tabloids had claimed that she had been “hounded to death by charities”, despite her family stating that charities were not responsible.

Following this, the Fundraising Standards Board opened an investigation at the personal request of Prime Minister David Cameron. This will include looking at how charities share donors contact details with other charities and organisations.