I'm sure when I was a kid there were different variations on these - Twickenham High Street used to have one collecting for polio, complete with callipers. With hindsight, the fact that polio had been nigh-on eradicated in the first world by 1980 makes me a bit suspicious as to where the money was going.
Still, as this photo shows - there is a corner of Marylebone where the residents don't give a fuck about mocking the tiny blind. Personally, I'd have given him a labrador and really gone for the 'cute sympathy' vote.
