Rev Chad Varah - The Scotsman Rev Chad Varah 00:31 Wednesday 14 November 2007 Founder of the Samaritans Born: 12 November, 1911, on Humberside. Died: 8 November, 2007, in London, aged 95. HE WAS an unconventional cleric and his unorthodox personality led Chad Varah, CH, CBE to found the Samaritans. The movement set out to help the destitute and depressed and from small beginnings in London a worldwide organisation grew. His vision and humanity became a vital lifeline to many. Varah was already in his 40s and had been vicar of several charges in England before he came to St Stephen, Walbrook - one of the finest examples of Sir Christopher Wren's architecture in London. He was to grace its pulpit for virtually the rest of his life but he emblazoned its name internationally when he founded the Samaritans in 1953. He had conducted the funeral of a young girl who had died by suicide and he was told by a friend that they were both in fear of understanding their maturing bodies.

"Little girl," Varah told the girl, "I shall tell you all about sex." That story, and Varah's discovery that there were three suicides a day in London, led him to start, in the crypt of his church, the Samaritans. He told his first - and all subsequent volunteers - that they had to listen and be non-judgmental. "Befriending is fundamental," he assured them. "We must go along beside someone's pain." Edward Chad Varah was the son of the vicar of St Chad's on Humberside and even in his youth he was something of a rebel. His faith was assured, but not the conventional faith of his father, and after Keble College, Oxford, he attended Lincoln Theological College and was ordained in 1935. In the 1950s Varah showed his unconventional streak when he also worked as a scriptwriter for the hugely successful comics of the era: Girl and Eagle. It was Varah who wrote the daredevil adventures of Dan Dare, who weekly saved the planet.

After several charges in and around London, Varah was appointed to St Stephen and his experiences over the years led him to found the Good Samaritans in November 1953 - the name was shortened some years later. The original principle was simple: To befriend the suicidal and despairing. Varah had the knack of attracting press coverage and the famous Samaritan telephone number, MANsion House 9000, was soon well known throughout the country. From two distressed calls on November 1 the number grew to more than 100 within a fortnight. Varah was adamant that, although the movement was centred in a church, the volunteers did not have to be believers and the organisation was defiantly non-denominational. He stressed that people who rang or arrived at the crypt must be "listened to with absolute attention" and everything said must be in confidence. No-one would know people's full name and if a client used a pseudonym that was not a problem. In Scotland, there are 20 Samaritan offices from Orkney to the Borders and recently their Edinburgh office stated that the number of calls they received rose by 26,000 last year.

A spokesman said: "Scotland's suicide rate is still very disturbing, but it is finally starting to come down while our calls have gone up. So something must be working." Varah widened the scope of the movement in 1974 when he set up Befrienders International (later Samaritans Worldwide) and then became its president in 1983. He ceased being involved in the day-to-day running of the organisation - believing that the volunteers themselves should make such decisions - but in 2003, at the 50th anniversary of its foundation, Varah expressed some disapproval of the way it was being run. Indeed there had been skirmishes before; back in 1974, Varah had been removed as a director of the London branch and simply styled "founder". Perhaps Varah was too large a personality to be involved with the organisation he had created. Its growth meant far greater controls and modern technology dramatically broadened its scope. Certainly he was much heartened when his son, Michael, was appointed a trustee of the Samaritans in 2005 which signalled a necessary rapprochement.

In his autobiography, Before I Die Again (the title refers to Varah's belief in reincarnation), he wrote of his belief in speaking his mind. He agreed it often gained him respect but "often led to conflict". That certainly never worried him and although St Stephen was seldom used on a Sunday for services, the enterprising Varah held concerts for City workers at lunchtime and sung Evensongs. He commissioned a new altar from Henry Moore (causing much controversy) and performed many society weddings in the church. His unremitting zeal led him to contribute articles to many varied magazines (including Penthouse) and his final sermon (at the age of 92) in November 2003 was delivered with all the gusto of old. He was supported, as he entered the church, by Joanna Lumley and chose for his sermon to defend the openly gay Bishop-elect of Gloucester. His own personal lifestyle was equally unconventional. He had a long and happy marriage but that did not stop Varah enjoying the close friendship of other women, including the late Monica Dickens; indeed the novelist founded the American Samaritans. His fitting legacy is the Samaritans.

The support, comfort and succour it has brought to many is a real achievement and Varah's creation of a hotline for those in despair has, undoubtedly, saved many. As Dickens wrote in her foreword for the American Samaritans, "the method of befriending is so simple, so direct, so purely human that it can work anywhere in the world". Varah himself never lost sight of the original principles of the organisation and once, defending his personal beliefs with a subtle humour, he reminded the managers that it was literally "impossible for him to resign as founder". Varah was made a CBE in 1995 and a CH in 2000. He was prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral. His wife predeceased him and he is survived by three of his four sons (Michael having died last year).

ALASDAIR STEVEN Obituary: The Rev Chad Varah | Society | The Guardian The Rev Chad Varah Liberal cleric who founded of the Samaritans, his life was dedicated to 'listening therapy' Simon Armson Share on Messenger Close The Rev Dr Chad Varah, who has died aged 95, dedicated his long life to providing care and emotional support to people contemplating suicide, and teaching others how to provide that support. To this end, in 1953 he founded the Samaritans - "to befriend the suicidal and despairing". The movement is now a household name, with more than 200 branches in the UK and Ireland and some 17,000 trained volunteers providing confidential, non-judgmental, emotional support around the clock. In 2004, 4.7m telephone calls were made to the organisation. Last year, the number of contacts exceeded 5m. Varah also promoted the same principle internationally through Befrienders Worldwide, as its founder/chairman from 1974 to 1983, and president from then until 1986.

Befrienders Worldwide now operates in more than 40 countries, including some where there is no easy access to phones or computers, and where people will walk for hours to get emotional support. An inveterate traveller, Varah visited most, if not all of them, continuing these journeys into his 90s. Although he stepped down from day-to-day involvement with the Samaritans in later life, for more than four decades he continued to be immensely proud of the organisation. It was only as the Samaritans' 50th anniversary approached in 2003 that he felt it necessary to voice his disapproval and disappointment at some of the ways the Samaritans and Befrienders Worldwide were being directed. However, in the summer of 2005, a rapprochement was reached. He was delighted when, in 2006, his eldest son, Michael, who died earlier this year, was elected to the organisation's newly created board of trustees. Varah was a man of immense intellectual and linguistic skills, of eclectic interests, originality and practicality.

He was born the eldest of nine children in the village of Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, where his father - the local vicar and a canon - named him after St Chad, founder of the parish. In his autobiography, Before I Die Again, published in 1992 - the title referred to his belief in reincarnation - Varah described his father as "a very strong character, a man of principle with firm beliefs and convictions, someone with the moral courage to speak what he believed, whether it would make him popular or unpopular". The son inherited those qualities. The extent to which Chad spoke what he believed often earned him respect, but not infrequently led him into conflict - not that this ever weakened his resolve. From his schooling at Worksop college, Nottinghamshire, he gained an exhibition in natural sciences to Keble College, Oxford, but switched subjects and, in 1933, obtained a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. A keen linguist and with a great love of music, he was active in the university Russian and Slavonic clubs (he would go on to publish two volumes of Russian Orthodox church music).

He also founded the student Scandinavian club - "not least because of the access it gave me to long-legged, blue-eyed blondes", he reflected candidly in later life. Despite an initial reluctance to follow in his father's footsteps, Varah was persuaded by his godfather, Archbishop Hine, to study at Lincoln Theological College. Ordained in 1936, he was curate at St Giles, Lincoln (1935-38), St Mary's, Putney (1938-40), Barrow-in-Furness (1940-42), and vicar of Holy Trinity, Blackburn (1942-49) and St Paul, Clapham junction (1949-53). In 1940, he married Susan Whanslaw, who became a key figure in the Church of England as world president of the Mothers' Union during the 1970s, steering through important changes in the organisation's statutes. They had one daughter, triplet sons (born at home in the Blackburn vicarage in wartime Britain), and then a fourth son.

This growing family and the scale of his parish work were often the cause of Varah's pleas to the Almighty about the pressures on his time. At Clapham Junction in the early 1950s, the house visits, youth clubs, teaching, and (as chaplain of St John's hospital, Battersea) "bawling prayers at geriatric patients" meant that his stipend covered only his secretary's wages. So, from 1950 until 1961, he built a second career, working into the night as a scriptwriter and visualiser for the children's comics Eagle, Girl, Robin and Swift, applying his scientific knowledge - notably as one of the brains behind the strip cartoon spaceman Dan Dare - and dramatising the lives of famous religious figures for young readers on the back covers of these publications. These titles belonged to the stable published by fellow clergyman Marcus Morris, another believer that good, popular writing could improve people's lives. (Morris, who would go on to head the National Magazine Company, once described Varah as "the wild card of the Church of England").

This was the impetus, too, behind Varah's consultancy work for the sex education magazine Forum for 20 years until 1987. In that year, the HIV/Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust made him its patron, a role he held until 1999. The origins of the Samaritans went back to 1935, the year in which Varah conducted his first funeral, as an assistant curate in Lincoln. The subject was a 13-year-old girl who had taken her own life, fearful that she had venereal disease and would die a slow, painful and shameful death. In fact, she had simply started to menstruate. Varah vowed at her graveside to devote himself to helping other people overcome the sort of isolation and ignorance that had caused the girl to kill herself. He would do it through a combination of education, and by providing access to emotional support in times of need. As one of the earlier proponents of sex education, particularly to poorly educated young people, he earned the label, as he wryly observed later, of "a dirty old man by the time I was 25".

His teaching swelled attendances at his youth clubs and attracted young couples preparing for marriage as well as married couples who had started to drift apart. "It was marriage guidance before it was invented," he said. Varah also gave an early warning of the approach of the permissive society, usually associated with the 1960s, with an article in Picture Post magazine in 1952. Far more important to him than the outraged responses of conservative Christians were the 235 people who wrote in afterwards to bare their souls, 14 of whom showed signs of considering suicide. In the early 1950s, three suicides a day were officially recorded in Greater London. Varah felt that there was a great need that was not being met by doctors and social workers. Some desperate people clearly preferred to turn to someone of his liberal views. Varah pondered that if it was so easy to save lives, why not make this his full-time work? But then, how would he support himself and his young family, and what could be the equivalent of a 999 emergency number for the suicidal to make contact? Such challenges initially deterred him.

But, as he related in his autobiography: "Then I said to God, be reasonable! Don't look at me ... I'm possibly the busiest person in the Church of England ... It'd need to be a priest with one of those city churches with no parishioners." At this point, he set off for a holiday at the English church at Knokke, Flanders, where he received an unexpected telegram from the Grocers' Livery Company in London, inviting him to apply for the living of St Stephen Walbrook, of which the company was patron - just such a City of London parish. Once installed as rector of the Wren masterpiece and Lord Mayor's parish church, Varah was soon inundated with demands for help from the suicidal and despairing, and enlisted some of the laity of his tiny parish to help - not as trained counsellors, but as ordinary volunteers offering a listening ear and emotional support. At that time suicide was illegal in Britain. Varah founded the Samaritans in the church vestry on November 2 1953 and continued to run the organisation from the crypt, where the first volunteers were based.

In February 1954, he decided the group should become a freestanding organisation. "I called our little band together and suggested that the whole project should be handed over to them, the volunteers, because I should never again pick up the emergency telephone, nor be the person to say 'come in' when someone tapped timidly on the door." In spite of this declaration, he continued to befriend the most desperate and despairing, working alongside the volunteers, for many years. Though Varah held Samaritans' posts thereafter for decades - including director of the London branch from 1953 to 1974, and its president from 1974 to 1986 - and wrote the movement's handbook, Samaritans: Befriending the Suicidal (1984 and 1988), he ensured from the outset that its voluntary principle could flourish without him. The novelist Monica Dickens became one of those the London Samaritans recruited, and inspired by Varah went on to set up the first American branch.

In her autobiography, An Open Book, published in 1978, she wrote: "The recruiting slogan is 'Are you ordinary enough to be a Samaritan?" Varah, paradoxically, was not ordinary at all. How could an ordinary person, Dickens suggests, have set up a method of befriending so simple, so direct, and so purely human that it can work anywhere in the world. In 1972, BBC television screened Varah's play Nobody Understands Miranda as part of a six-episode series called The Befrienders, loosely based on the Samaritans' casework. Varah's battle for sex education continued into his 80s. In 1992 he founded, and from 1999 was secretary of, Magmog (Men Against Genital Mutilation of Girls), going into the homes of immigrants from east Africa to convince them of the cruelty of the practice. Only in 2003, at the age of 92, did he finally retire as rector of St Stephen Walbrook and prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral (at this stage, he preferred to drop the Rev and Prebendary from his title).

At the evensong held in November 2003 to celebrate his retirement, the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, presented him with the Cross of St Erconwald to mark his long service and achievements. He was, at the time, the oldest incumbent in the Church of England. The desire to speak his mind and take on contentious issues never left Varah. Some would say that it was what had kept him going. He would not easily drop an issue in which he believed. More than once did Samaritans (the name was changed from his original the Samaritans in 2002) remind him that it was literally impossible for him to resign as founder. But despite any disagreements he may have had with those to whom he handed over the organisation, it was his inspiration and determination that created and developed it. He never lost sight of his early ideal of making suicide "unimportant as a cause of death" all over the world.

Though Samaritans has kept up to date with the changing needs of society and developments in technology - support service is now available by text as well as email, face to face, by letter and telephone - it has always remained faithful to the founding philosophy of "active listening therapy", as Varah called it. Among many awards, Varah was made a Companion of Honour in the millennium year honours list. His wife died in 1993, and he is survived by one daughter, three sons, 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. · Edward Chad Varah, clergyman and founder of the Samaritans, born November 12 1911; died November 8 2007 The Rev. Chad Varah, 95; founded Samaritans movement - The Boston Globe The Rev. Chad Varah, 95; founded Samaritans movement The Rev. Chad Varah started the Samaritans suicide prevention group in 1953. (samaritans via reuters/file) Email | Print | Single Page | Text size – + By Adam Bernstein Washington Post / November 15, 2007 WASHINGTON - The Rev.

Chad Varah - an Anglican priest and sex therapist who started the Samaritans movement, an early telephone help line credited with making significant contributions to suicide prevention - died Nov. 8 at the Basingstoke hospital near London. He was 95. Father Varah started the Samaritans in 1953 with a newspaper advertisement pleading for volunteers who would come to his historic London church and use "active listening therapy" to help the hundreds of people who contemplated suicide every day. He once said he thought of his Samaritans as fire-spotters who "keep watch for the conflagrations that break out in human lives." The organization became a massive volunteer force with 202 branches in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland and includes a system of drop-in centers and home-visit services. It operates in more than 40 countries as the Befrienders Worldwide. Father Varah was widely recognized as having pioneered the phone help line for those threatening suicide, and he received honors from the American Association of Suicidology as well as from Queen Elizabeth II. But the volunteer group was also criticized at times for being too passive with callers in the name of nonjudgment.

One of the movement's principles was that a caller "does not lose the freedom to make his own decision, including the decision to take his own life." Father Varah considered the Samaritans a "spiritual alternative" to the police emergency line, especially in its early years, when attempting suicide was criminalized. Volunteers, armed with sympathy and the basics of psychotherapy, fielded anonymous calls from across the psychological spectrum. As Father Varah explained, some people called after midnight to complain they were unloved. Others expressed suicidal thoughts or violent urges against their unfaithful spouses. Like the callers, volunteer staffers - doctors, stockbrokers, and secretaries - are also anonymous, a step meant to underscore the mission over individual personality. Diana Churchill, daughter of former prime minister Winston Churchill, was a volunteer, and Father Varah revealed that only after she took her own life in 1963. Edward Chad Varah was born in Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, where his father, a Church of England minister, was vicar. He graduated from Oxford University's Keble College, and studied at a Lincolnshire theological college. He was ordained in 1936.

A year earlier, while working as a church assistant, he had presided over the funeral of a 13-year-old who killed herself because she mistook menstruation for a symptom of venereal disease. As he repeated often, the funeral proved a pivotal experience. He constantly denounced ignorance and isolation that resulted from poor sex education and a repressive society. In subsequent parish work, he emphasized sex counseling and remained current on developments in psychology. More controversially, he talked openly about the pleasures of masturbation and what he considered the usefulness of pornography to help impotent men. He also contributed articles titled "Let Them Be Gay," "The Right to Abortion," and "Is Marriage Still Valid?" to a British pornographic magazine. The gusto with which he enjoyed breaking stigmas landed him in trouble with his church, but he always seemed to prevail. Father Varah spoke of a vital need for the church to address sexual problems, because his parish experience showed many were driven to contemplate suicide as a result. He had the opportunity when, in 1953, he began his 50-year posting as rector of St. Stephen Walbrook in London.

Father Varah found himself overwhelmed by cries for help, and he enlisted parishioners to aid him with calls. After formalizing the organization, he became a public spokesman for the movement in interviews and by writing a Samaritans guidebook. He said he considered it a myth that those who speak about committing suicide never do; two of his early clients did indeed kill themselves. After stepping down from the Samaritans in 1986, he campaigned against genital mutilation among East African immigrants. Father Varah wrote a memoir, "Before I Die Again" (1992), a title that referred to his belief in reincarnation. His wife, D. Susan Whanslaw Varah, whom he married in 1940, died in 1993. A son, one of triplets, died in April. He leaves four children, 12 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. © Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company. more stories like this Rev. Chad Varah, Anglican Priest Who Helped the Suicidal, Dies at 95 - The New York Times The New York Times Europe |Rev.

Chad Varah, Anglican Priest Who Helped the Suicidal, Dies at 95 Search The Rev. Chad Varah, an outspoken, publicity-sly, sometimes cantankerous Anglican priest who started a telephone hot line for the suicidal after concluding that loneliness is the most heart-rending anguish, died Thursday in Basingstoke, England. He was 95. His death was announced by Samaritans, the suicide-prevention charity he founded. From his initial rush to the aid of a despairing mother in November 1953, Father Varah’s mission to give hope to the perhaps fatally depressed grew to 200 branches in Britain and Ireland and 200 more in 38 other countries. It became a model for crisis hot lines. Father Varah’s vision began in 1935, when, as a 23-year-old deacon, he brooded bitterly after the first burial service he conducted for a girl, who, by varying accounts, was 13 or 14. She had killed herself because she wrongly feared that the onset of menstruation meant she had a venereal disease.

“Here was a life that could have been saved if only there had been an intelligent person she could bring herself to talk to,” he said in an interview with Church Illustrated magazine in 1959. Continue reading the main story As he moved from parish to parish, Father Varah found that many people he helped with sexual problems, his emerging interest, were suicidal. He learned that in the London area, an average of three people killed themselves each day. He began to dream of an emergency telephone line where those in despair might “get some love from a stranger.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The opportunity came in 1953, when he became the rector of St. Stephen Walbrook, a church in London built by Christopher Wren. The church is just behind the Mansion House, where the lord mayor, the church’s only parishioner, lives. That meant that Father Varah could largely devote himself to what he called “the parish of despair.” As Father Varah told the story, he was digging through the church’s rubble-choked vestry when he found a telephone that had survived bombing by the Germans and still worked.

He called to ask for a new number, suggesting “Mansion House 9000.” It turned out that that was already the number. “I took it as a sign that God wanted me to go ahead,” he told Church Illustrated for an article that was condensed in The Reader’s Digest in 1960. The first call to the number came from a woman who, with her four children by three fathers, was about to be evicted. As reported by The Independent in 1992, Father Varah left his post, something he later never allowed. He found the woman with two of her children in a hotel room. Photo The Rev. Chad Varah Credit Samaritans, via Reuters He placed one child with his wife and rushed around London in a taxi scrambling to find someone to take the baby. Eventually, the taxi driver and his wife did. There was one more call that day, but soon they were coming in at the rate of 100 a day. Clients ranged from paupers to millionaires, teenagers to octogenarians, and people in all manner of occupations and professions. Samaritans got its name from a headline in The Daily Mirror.

The reference to the biblical story did not please Father Varah, who was adamant that all religious teaching should be avoided when helping the desperate. Nor could the police be informed of anything that clients discussed confidentially. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Edward Chad Varah was born on Nov. 12, 1911, at Barton upon Humber, Lincolnshire, England, the eldest of nine children of Canon William Edward Varah, vicar of St. Chad’s Church there. He graduated from Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics, then from Lincoln Theological College. He served in a string of parishes before St. Stephen. Father Varah added to his income by writing scripts for comic strips and became known for the liberality of his views on sex. He refused to condemn adultery in all cases, promoted abortion and gay rights, and served on the board of a sexually frank magazine.

He said he was called “a dirty old man by the time he was 25,” and, years later, “Britain’s oldest sex therapist.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story When he was summoned as a witness in the obscenity trial of Linda Lovelace, the star of “Deep Throat,” a famous pornographic movie, he was asked about the Seventh Commandment, on adultery. “Why are you quoting this ancient desert lore at me?” The Times of London said he answered. Almost from the beginning, Father Varah fought with others in Samaritans. He left the organization in its second year, but served as director of its London branch. He became very active in the international efforts of the organization, which, after several permutations, is now called Befrienders Worldwide. Father Varah’s wife, the former Doris Susan Whanslaw, died in 1993. She was president of the Mothers’ Union, the Anglican Church’s principal women’s organization. He is survived by their daughter and three of their four sons. In 1963, Father Varah conducted the funeral service of Diana Churchill, Winston Churchill’s daughter. She had worked as a volunteer for Samaritans before she committed suicide herself.

In 1994, he officiated at the marriage of Lady Sarah Chatto, the only daughter of Princess Margaret. Until he retired in 2003 at 92, Father Varah commuted by public transportation. His penchant for incendiary statements was evident in 1993, when in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he castigated Pope John Paul II for his opposition to contraception. “It was a great mistake to make an ignorant Polish peasant into a pope,” he said. Father Varah, who was said to be able to recite every poem he had ever heard, was more curious than concerned about death, because of his belief in reincarnation. His favorite three words of advice were intended to provide a sense of proportion: “It doesn’t matter.” A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C11 of the New York edition with the headline: Rev. Chad Varah, Anglican Priest Who Helped the Suicidal, Dies at 95. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Obituary: Rev Dr Chad Varah | Society | The Guardian Rev Dr Chad Varah Samaritans founder Rev Dr Chad Varah, who has died aged 95.

Photograph: Samaritans/PA Thursday 8 November 2007 07.59 EST First published on Thursday 8 November 2007 07.59 EST Share on Messenger Close The Rev Dr Chad Varah, who has died aged 95, dedicated his long life to providing emotional support, caring for people, and teaching others how to do so. To that end, he founded The Samaritans in 1953 "to befriend the suicidal and despairing". The movement now has 202 branches in UK and Ireland, and some 15,500 volunteers providing confidential, non-judgmental emotional support, at all hours. Varah promoted the same principle internationally through Befrienders International (Samaritans Worldwide) as its founder/chairman (1974-83), and then president (1983-86). Befrienders International now operates in more than 40 countries, including some where there is no easy access to phones or emails, and where people will walk for hours to receive emotional support.

An inveterate traveller, Varah visited most, if not all of them, continuing these journeys into his nineties. Although he stepped down from day-to-day involvement with The Samaritans in later life, for more than four decades Varah continued to be immensely proud of the organisation. It was only as The Samaritans' 50th anniversary in 2003 approached that he felt it necessary to express his disapproval of, and disappointment with, some of the ways both The Samaritans and Befrienders International were being directed. However, in the summer of 2005 a rapprochement was reached when he enjoyed a particularly happy meeting with the new chief executive and the then chairman of The Samaritans, listening enthusiastically to news about all those people who continue his original enlightened and essential work. Varah was delighted when, in 2006, his eldest son, the late Michael Varah, was appointed to sit on the organisation's newly created board of trustees. Varah was a man of immense intellect and linguistic skills, of eclectic interests, originality and practicality. He was the eldest of nine children of the vicar of the village of Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire.

His father named him after St Chad, founder of the parish. In his autobiography, Before I Die Again (1992 - the title referred to his belief in reincarnation), Varah described his father as "a very strong character, a man of principle with firm beliefs and convictions, and a man with the moral courage to speak what he believed, whether it would make him popular or unpopular". His first-born son inherited those qualities: the extent to which Chad spoke what he believed often earned him respect, but often led him into conflict - not that this ever weakened his resolve. From his schooling at Worksop college, Nottinghamshire, he gained an exhibition in natural sciences to Keble College, Oxford, but switched subjects and in 1933 obtained a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. A keen linguist with a great love of music, he was active in Oxford's Russian and Slavonic Clubs (he would go on to publish two volumes of Russian Orthodox church music). He also founded the university's Scandinavian Club: "not least because of the access it gave me to long-legged, blue-eyed blondes," he reflected candidly in later life.

Despite an initial reluctance to follow in his father's footsteps, Varah was persuaded by his godfather, Archbishop Hine, to study at Lincoln Theological College. Ordained in 1936, he was curate at St Giles, Lincoln (1935-38), St Mary's, Putney (1938-40), Barrow-in-Furness (1940-42), and vicar of Holy Trinity, Blackburn (1942-49) and St Paul, Clapham Junction (1949-53). In 1940, he married Susan Whanslaw, who later became a key figure in the Church of England as world president of the Mothers' Union during the 1970s, steering through important changes in the organisation's statutes. They had one daughter, triplet sons (born at home in the Blackburn vicarage in wartime Britain), and then a fourth son.

At Clapham Junction in the early 1950s, the house visits, "open" youth clubs, teaching, and - as chaplain of St John's hospital, Battersea, "bawling prayers at geriatric patients" - meant that his stipend covered only what he had to pay his secretary. So, from 1950 until 1961, he built a second career, working into the night as children's comic scriptwriter and visualiser for Girl and Eagle, Robin and Swift, bringing his scientific knowledge to life in comicbook space stories - notably as one of the brains behind strip cartoon spaceman Dan Dare - and dramatising the lives of famous religious figures for young readers on the back covers of these publications. These titles belonged to the stable published by fellow clergyman Marcus Morris, another believer that good, popular writing could improve people's lives. (Morris, who would go on to head the National Magazine Company, once described Varah as "the wild card of the Church of England").

This was the impetus, too, behind Varah's consultancy work for the sex education magazine Forum for 20 years till 1987 - in that year, in recognition of this efforts, the aids charity The Terrence Higgins Trust made him its patron, a role he held till 1999. In 1935, Varah had conducted his first funeral, as an assistant curate in Lincoln, for a 13-year-old girl who had taken her own life, fearing she had venereal disease and would die a slow, painful and shameful death. In fact, the girl had started to menstruate. Varah vowed at her graveside to devote himself to helping other people overcome the sort of isolation and ignorance that had caused the girl to kill herself. He would do it through a combination of education, and by providing access to emotional support in times of need. As one of the earlier proponents of sex education, particularly to poorly educated young people, he earned the label, as he wryly observed later, of "a 'dirty old man' by the time I was 25".

His teaching swelled attendances at his youth clubs, and attracted young couples preparing for marriage - and married couples who had started drifting apart. "It was marriage guidance before it was invented," he said. Varah also gave an early warning of the approach of the permissive society, usually associated with the 1960s, with an article in Picture Post in 1952. Far more important to him than the outraged responses of conservative Christians were the 235 people who wrote in to bare their souls, 14 of whom showed signs of considering suicide as an option. In the early 1950s, three suicides a day were officially recorded in Greater London. Varah felt that there was a great need that was not being met by doctors and social workers. Some desperate people clearly preferred to turn to someone of his liberal views: Varah pondered that if it was so easy to save lives, why didn't he make this his full-time work? But then, how would he support himself and his young family, and what could be the equivalent of a 999 emergency contact number for the suicidal to make contact? Such challenges initially deterred him.

But, as he related in his autobiography: "Then I said to God, be reasonable! Don't look at me ... I'm possibly the busiest person in the Church of England ... It'd need to be a priest with one of those city churches with no parishioners." At this point, he set off for a holiday at the English church at Knokke, Flanders, where he received a quite unexpected telegram from the Grocers' Livery Company in London offering him the living of St Stephen Walbrook - just such a City of London parish. Once instituted as rector there, Varah was soon inundated with demands for help from the suicidal and despairing, and enlisted some of the laity of his tiny parish to help - not as trained counsellors, but as volunteers. Varah founded the Samaritans in the church vestry on November 2 1953 and continued to run the organisation from the crypt, where the first volunteers were based. In February 1954, he decided the group should become a freestanding organisation.

"I called our little band together and suggested that the whole project should be handed over to them, the volunteers, because I should never again pick up the emergency telephone, nor be the person to say 'come in' when someone tapped timidly on the door." In spite of this declaration, he continued to befriend the most desperate and despairing for many years. Though Varah held Samaritans posts thereafter for decades - including director of the London branch from 1953 to 1974, and its president from 1974 to 1986 - and wrote the movement's handbook, Samaritans: Befriending The Suicidal (1984 and 1988), he ensured from the outset that its voluntary principle could flourish without him. The novelist Monica Dickens, inspired by Varah, set up the first American branch of The Samaritans. In her autobiography An Open Book, first published in 1978, she wrote: "The recruiting slogan is 'Are you ordinary enough to be a Samaritan?'" Varah, paradoxically, was not ordinary at all.

How else, Dickens suggests, could he have set up a method of befriending which is so simple, so direct, and so purely human that it can work anywhere in the world. In 1972, BBC television screened Varah's play Nobody Understands Miranda as part of a six-episode series called The Befrienders, loosely based on The Samaritans casework. Varah's battle for well-informed sex education continued into his eighties: in 1992 he founded, and from 1999 was secretary of, MAGMOG (Men against Genital Mutilation of Girls), going into the homes of immigrants from East Africa to convince them of the pointless cruelty of the practice. Only in 2003, at the age of 92 and 50 years after he had founded the Samaritans in its crypt, did he finally retire as rector of his beloved church, St Stephen Walbrook, and prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral. He was, at the time, the oldest incumbent in the Church of England. The desire to speak his mind and take on contentious issues never left him: some would say that it was what had kept him going.

He would not easily drop an issue in which he believed. More than once did Samaritans (the name was changed from his original The Samaritans in 2002) remind him that it was literally impossible for him to resign as founder. But despite any disagreements he may have had with those to whom he handed over the organisation, it was his inspiration and determination that created and developed it. He never lost sight of his early ideal of making suicide "unimportant as a cause of death" all over the world. Though Samaritans has kept up to date with the changing needs of society and developments in technology - support service is now available by text as well as email, face to face, by letter and telephone - it has always remained faithful to the founding philosophy of "active listening therapy", as Varah called it. Among many awards, Varah was made a Companion of Honour in the Millennium Year honours list. His wife died in 1993, and he is survived by four of his children.

· Edward Chad Varah, clergyman and founder of The Samaritans, born November 12 1911; died November 8 2007 Edward Chad Varah Life's Vocation Celebrating the 'men of God' THIS IS YOUR LIFE - The Reverend Edward Chad Varah, CH CBE, Anglican priest, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre . He is best remembered as the founder of The Samaritans, established in 1953 as the world's first crisis hotline organisation, offering non-religious telephone support to those contemplating suicide. He was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1935 and as a priest in 1936. After several postings, he became rector of St Stephen Walbrook, in the City of London, where, in the crypt of the church he founded charity hotline which received its first call on 2 November 1953. Edward Chad Varah with Eamonn Andrews on This Is Your Life programme details...

Broadcast live: Mon 20 Feb 1961 Broadcast time: 7.30-8.00pm The Rev Chad Varah | The Independent The Rev Chad Varah Founder of the Samaritans telephone helpline charity Saturday 10 November 2007 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Edward Chad Varah, priest: born Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire 12 November 1911; ordained deacon 1935, priest 1936; Vicar, Holy Trinity, Blackburn 1942-49; Vicar, St Paul, Clapham Junction 1949-53; Rector, St Stephen Walbrook 1953-2003; Founder, The Samaritans 1953, Director 1953-74, President, London Branch 1974-86; OBE 1969, CBE 1995; Prebendary, St Paul's Cathedral 1975-97, Senior Prebendary 1997-2003; Founder Chairman,

 Befrienders International (Samaritans Worldwide) 1974-83, President 1983-86; CH 2000; married 1940 Susan Whanslaw (died 1993; three sons, one daughter, and one son deceased); died Basingstoke, Hampshire 8 November 2007.

Chad Varah was one of those people inspired by a sudden brainwave from which developed an international organisation of almost breathtaking simplicity. In 1953 he read that in Greater London three people killed themselves every day, and it occurred to him that what people who were feeling suicidal or in despair most needed was an emergency telephone line akin to 999. This he set up in the crypt of St Stephen Walbrook, a magnificent Wren church in the City of London, and so were born the Samaritans. During the greatest period of expansion, from about 1964 until 1973, on average a new Samaritan branch was established in the United Kingdom every eight weeks. Today there are about 200 centres throughout the British Isles, manned 24 hours a day, and the work of the Samaritans is conducted in around 40 countries overseas. Edward Chad Varah was born in 1911, at Barton-upon-Humber. He was the eldest of nine children and his father was parish priest of a church in Lincolnshire founded by the seventh-century converter of the Midlands, St Chad, after whom Edward was baptised.

The name Varah is almost certainly Ukrainian in origin, but the family had lived in Yorkshire since at least 1537. Chad Varah was educated at Worksop College in Nottingham, and gained an Exhibition in Natural Sciences to Keble College, Oxford. From there he went on to study for the ministry at Lincoln Theological College, where one of his teachers was the sub-warden Michael Ramsey, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. He was ordained deacon in 1935 and priest a year later, and after serving three assistant curacies, Varah was inducted, in 1942, to his first living, Holy Trinity, Blackburn, where he remained until 1949. For the next four years he was vicar of the Church of St Paul, Clapham Junction, and it was in 1953, the year he founded the Samaritans, that he was offered St Stephen Walbrook by the Worshipful Company of Grocers. He was also working at the time as a children's comic scriptwriter for Eagle, Robin and Swift, and was one of the creators of the cartoon space hero Dan Dare.

In talking about the reason he set up an emergency telephone service for people tempted to commit suicide, Chad Varah frequently referred to his early-acquired expertise in offering marriage guidance to young couples, and to teaching sex generally to youngsters in his youth clubs. "As a result," he used to say, "I became very knowledgeable and practised", and he even went so far as to claim to have ushered in the "permissive society". In his nineties, he described himself as the "world's oldest sex therapist". He was to a fair degree obsessed by sex (one of his more esoteric writings was a 1976 book called Telephone Masturbators and How to Befriend Them) and it has even been suggested that Varah's initial motive in setting up an emergency telephone service was in order to offer sexual counselling, and that it was from this springboard that the far more broadly based Samaritan movement developed. During the first year of operation, some 100 callers were seen. Volunteers were recruited on an alarmingly ad hoc basis. There was little structured training but a good deal of glamorous dashing about "seeking souls to save".

The earliest "rector and assistants", as Varah's first followers were called, banded together into a Company of Samaritans, holding special services of dedication and admission, and for the first 10 years, only clergy were appointed as local directors. It was small wonder that, with the name "Samaritan" attached as well, the movement was so soon and so strongly identified with religiosity. But today one of the seven principles governing the work of the Samaritans expressly forbids any volunteer to impose their own convictions or to influence callers "in regard to politics, philosophy or religion". The first branch outside London was founded in Edinburgh in 1959, and others soon followed at Liverpool, Glasgow and Aberdeen. By 1961 there were Samaritan centres in Belfast, Bournemouth, Bradford, Hull, Jersey and Portsmouth, and enthusiasm for the Samaritan ideal of "listening acceptance and personal caring" had spread to what was then Salisbury in Rhodesia, to Karachi, Bombay and Hong Kong. In 1963, attempted suicide ceased to be a crime, and that year 21 founding branches were incorporated into a company called the Samaritans, to be run in future by a Council of Management.

In 1974 a further milestone was reached when delegates from all over the world met at St Stephen Walbrook to establish Befrienders International, the Samaritans Worldwide, of which Chad Varah became the president. The numbers of Samaritans recruited since 1953 must run into hundreds of thousands; around 17,000 volunteers are on the rota of the United Kingdom branches at any time, with thousands of new recruits needed each year just to keep pace with the drop-out rate. No one knows how many suicides have been prevented, but some five million contacts with the Samaritans (by telephone, email or face-to-face) are dealt with in this country every year alone. The establishment of the Samaritans was a major achievement by any standards, but as Chad Varah grew older and his movement grew larger his inevitable loss of personal control caused him to withdraw into a severe paranoia never far below the surface at the best of times, and in his later years the cause of much grief to those who had admired his basic concepts. He seemed quite incapable of resting on his laurels, and the wildest letters and accusations flew about.

He attended his last annual conference in 1986, and resigned from all official connections later that year. In the Samaritans' 50th anniversary year, Varah, claiming that the organisation had strayed from its original aims, wrote to the Charity Commission asking that its charitable status be removed, but later a rapprochement was achieved. Varah was made an Honorary Prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in 1975 (and a Senior Prebendary in 1997) and an Honorary Fellow of Keble College in 1981. He was appointed OBE in 1969, advanced to CBE in 1995 and was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal in 1972. In 2000, he was made a Companion of Honour. Varah believed in reincarnation and his autobiography, published in 1992, was titled Before I Die Again.

Michael De-la-Noy The Reverend Prebendary Chad Varah - Telegraph The Reverend Prebendary Chad Varah The Reverend Prebendary Chad Varah 12:01AM GMT 09 Nov 2007 The Reverend Prebendary Chad Varah, who died aged 95, was one of the most remarkable, and most highly honoured, Church of England priests of modern times. Single-handedly, Chad Varah founded the telephone help service for people contemplating suicide which became known as The Samaritans and which, after a period of rapid growth in Britain, provided a model for similar organisations in most other parts of the world. From 1974 to 1986 Varah was founder-chairman, then president, of Befrienders International (Samaritans Worldwide), and in his ninetieth year his great contribution to human welfare was recognised by appointment as a Companion of Honour. A dynamic, combative priest of generous disposition and immense compassion, especially for those with sexual problems, he was quite unshockable.

But he was perfectly capable of shocking the more conventional elements in his Church, and far beyond it; and while the suggestion that he was responsible for inaugurating the “permissive society” of the 1950s and 1960s was untrue it was not entirely incredible. Related Articles Bernard Mayes, priest 03 Mar 2015 A controversial article outlining what he believed to be an enlightened Christian philosophy of sex appeared in a widely read magazine, Picture Post, in 1953, and for some 20 years he was a consultant to the magazine Forum, which specialised in the frank discussion of heterosexual and homosexual problems and aspirations. One of his many books, published in 1976, was entitled Telephone Masturbators. The early years of The Samaritans movement were financed, in part, by Varah’s use of his gift as a visualiser, inherited from his mother. This took him on to the staff of the then highly popular Eagle and Girl children’s comics, and eventually he was in constant demand for newspaper articles and broadcasts on the subject of suicide.

Edward Chad Varah, the eldest of nine children, was born on November 12 1911 at Barton-on-Humber, where his father, Canon William Edward Varah, was the vicar (he named his son after the founder of the parish, St Chad). From Worksop College he went on an exhibition to Keble College, Oxford, to read Natural Sciences, but he changed horses midstream and achieved only modest success in PPE. He was, however, secretary of the university’s Russian and Slavonic clubs, thus beginning a lifelong interest in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and was also founder-president of the Scandinavian Club. Varah prepared for ordination at Lincoln Theological College, where he was taught by Michael Ramsey, the future Archbishop of Canterbury; and although he confessed to having had “unspecified sexual relations with an unspecified number of girls” he became a curate of St Giles’, Lincoln, in 1935. In this new housing-estate parish he soon made a name for himself with his marriage preparation classes, which included explicit sex instruction, attracting young couples from all parts of the city.

After further curacies at Putney and Barrow-in-Furness, he became vicar of Holy Trinity, Blackburn, in 1942. There, he and a group of young men removed from the church the large, unused galleries and, as part of a general enlivening of parish life, he instituted an Industrial Harvest Festival in which representatives of all aspects of local industry and commerce brought to the church examples of their work. He also edited the diocesan magazine, The Crosier. In 1949 Varah moved to London to become vicar of St Paul’s, Clapham Junction, and chaplain of St John’s Hospital, Battersea. Church life was at a low ebb, and the congregation was tiny, but soon there were signs of revival. Besides his greatly valued pastoral work in the hospital he began to work for the newly-launched children’s comics. It was becoming increasingly clear, though, that his chief interest and skill lay in the field of personal counselling, which had been claiming an ever increasing amount of his time since his days as a curate in Lincoln. In 1935 Varah had conducted his first funeral.

It was for a 14-year-old girl who had committed suicide fearing that she was suffering from venereal disease, whereas in fact she had merely started to menstruate. And the turning point for Varah came in 1953, when he read in a newspaper that there were three suicides every day in the Greater London area. This coincided with an invitation from the Grocers’ Company, patrons of the living, to become rector of St Stephen Walbrook, alongside the Mansion House in the City of London. This beautiful Wren church, sensitively rebuilt after wartime bombing, had no regular congregation, and Varah accepted the appointment on the understanding that he would use the crypt as the base for a new kind of ministry to desperate people. He made it known that, with effect from November 2 1953, anyone contemplating suicide could telephone him at Mansion House 9000. Calls soon began to come in, and doubled each year from 100 in 1954 to 1,600 in 1959. Eventually, they would grow to 100 a day.

Initially Varah used his church stipend to pay a secretary and lived off his Fleet Street earnings, but as the number of clients increased he recruited and trained volunteer helpers. In 1956 he secured a grant to enable him to engage paid staff, including a professional psychiatrist. During the early part of 1954, however, the original concept of a counselling service had been abandoned in favour of a less demanding befriending service. This enabled a wider range of unqualified volunteers to be used. These were carefully selected, and in their training taught to recognise symptoms that required professional help. Religious tests and attempts to indoctrinate were strictly forbidden. Later the movement advertised its availability to the despairing as well as to the suicidal. Varah stood at the head of these developments, providing inspiration and expertise, and was more than content for others to deal with the increasing administrative demands. This left him free to remain actively involved in the work of the London base, and to help found branches in other parts of Britain. Within a decade few parts of the country were without a branch and the number of active helpers had risen to 17,000.

A national association was formed in 1963 and the expansion of the work overseas led later to the formation of an international body. Varah revelled in the extensive travel which this involved. He soon became familiar with the major, and many of the minor, airports of the world, seized an opportunity to fly from Bahrain to London on Concorde, and wherever he went gave classes on dealing with sexual problems. Language problems did not hinder him — he was fluent in French and knew some Russian, and was ready to use interpreters in China and Chile. On reaching the age of 75 in 1986 he retired from his various Samaritan offices, except that of Founder, but continued to travel the world, offering encouragement and advice. He did not, though, retire from his position as rector of St Stephen Walbrook. From the outset he had employed a professional quartet to sing 16th and 17th-century Masses at the Sunday morning Prayer Book Eucharist. The congregations were never large, but he became a much-loved figure in the City and his growing fame attracted to the church visitors from overseas.

As chaplain to the Lord Mayor, he always enjoyed his place in the coach at the annual Lord Mayor’s Procession, and he was a Liveryman of the Carmen and Grocers’ Companies. But disaster struck in 1978, when it was discovered that the erection of high-rise buildings had lowered the water table of the neighbourhood and dried out the foundations of the church, causing its walls and dome to become unstable. Immediate closure of the building was required, and nine years were to pass before it was ready for re-opening. During this time Varah shared in the worship at St Paul’s, of which he had become a Prebendary in 1975, and in partnership with his friend Peter (later Lord) Palumbo raised the money needed for the underpinning of the church’s foundations and the securing of its walls. When the work was nearing completion Varah, aided by Palumbo, commissioned Henry Moore to sculpt an altar to stand under the dome. Great controversy followed the refusal of the Chancellor of London diocese to grant permission for the altar on the ground that it was solid stone and not a table.

Undeterred, Varah appealed to the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved and, at what proved to be only the second time the Court had been convened in its long history, the Chancellor’s decision was overturned. A few eyebrows were raised when Varah, in his autobiography Before I Die Again (1992), announced: “When I say the Creed I assert my belief in Reincarnation”; but no one was surprised when, aged 81, he founded Men Against Genital Mutilation of Girls. Its membership was never large. He was patron of the Terence Higgins Trust, the HIV and Aids charity, from 1987 to 1999. Chad Varah finally retired as rector of St Stephen Walbrook in 2003, when, at 92, he was the oldest incumbent in the Church of England. He was appointed OBE in 1969 and advanced to CBE in 1995. An honorary fellow of Keble College, Oxford, he received honorary doctorates from six British universities.

Among numerous international awards were the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal and the Romanian Patriarchal Cross, awarded for his work as secretary of the Orthodox Churches Aid fund. His wife, Susan, who was a notable Central President of the Mothers’ Union from 1970 to 1976, died in 1993. She and Chad Varah had four sons (three of them triplets) and a daughter. One of their sons died in April this year. Samaritans founder Chad Varah, 95, dies - Telegraph Samaritans founder Chad Varah, 95, dies Chad Varah founded the Samaritans in 1953 By James Burleigh 12:01AM GMT 09 Nov 2007 Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans, died yesterday. He was 95. Mr Varah, who set up the support group from the crypt of his church in the City of London more than 50 years ago, died peacefully in his sleep at a hospital in Basingstoke, Hants, said a spokesman for the charity.

The Prince of Wales, who is the Samaritans' patron, said: "Chad Varah was an utterly remarkable man who founded an organisation which has saved the lives of countless people since 1953. He was an outstanding humanitarian and a great Briton." The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: "He made a unique contribution to the life of our whole society, changing attitudes to suicide and bringing a distinctively pastoral and wholly non-judgmental approach to people in need. Related Articles Obituary: Reverend Prebendary Chad Varah 09 Nov 2007 "His instinct that a sympathetic ear could make a difference has proved to be enormously important to those who felt alone and with nowhere to turn. "His vision and energy in the foundation of the Samaritans and its subsequent development is a legacy that stretches far beyond the church and far beyond these shores; one that will continue to bring help to those who 'just need someone to talk to'.

He will be greatly missed." Mr Varah's eldest child, Felicity, said: "Thanks to my father, Samaritans has been working for over 50 years, providing confidential, emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those which may lead to suicide. "His relationship with Samaritans had many chapters, from the moment he founded it in his beloved church, St Stephen Walbrook, in 1953, through its expansion worldwide, to the latter years when he stepped back to allow the movement to grow and flourish." The Samaritans movement now has 202 branches in Britain and Ireland, with about 15,500 volunteers providing confidential emotional support 24 hours a day. Mr Varah founded the charity in 1953 "to befriend the suicidal and despairing". He vowed to help people overcome a lack of education after conducting the funeral of a 13-year-old girl who had killed herself. Uneducated about sex, she feared her first period was the symptom of a sexually transmitted disease and that she would die a slow, painful and shameful death. Mr Varah was born at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, the eldest of nine children.

His father was vicar of Barton-upon-Humber and a canon. He studied at Worksop College, Notts, before going up to Keble College, Oxford, where he took a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. To subsidise his vicar's salary and to meet the financial demands of a growing family in the 1940s, Mr Varah built a second career as a children's comic writer, notably as one of the brains behind strip cartoon spaceman Dan Dare. His wife, Doris, died in 1993, and he is survived by four of his five children. His son, Michael Varah, who served as an elected Trustee of Samaritans from July 2005 until his death in April this year, once said: "My father described this befriending of the suicidal thus: There are in this world, in every country, people who seem to be 'ordinary', but who, when meeting a suicidal person, turn out to be extraordinary. "They can usually save lives. How? They give the sad person their total attention. They completely forget themselves. They listen... and listen... and listen, without interrupting.

"If asked for advice, they say: 'You're the only person who can advise you well - what do you think you should do?' They have no message. They do not preach. They have nothing to sell. "We call them 'Samaritans'." The history of Samaritans | Samaritans You are here Home > About us > Our organisation > The history of Samaritans The history of Samaritans Samaritans began in 1953 in London, founded by a vicar called Chad Varah. Throughout his career Chad had offered counselling to his parishioners, and wanted to do something more specific to help people struggling to cope and possibly contemplating suicide. How Samaritans started The initial idea for Samaritans came from the first funeral Chad conducted early on in his career: a girl aged 14 had started her period, but having no one to talk to believed that she had a sexually transmitted disease and took her own life. Chad was immensely moved by this senseless loss of life, "I might have dedicated myself to suicide prevention then and there, providing a network of people you could 'ask' about anything, however embarrassing, but I didn't come to that until later".

Felicity Varah Harding, Chad's daughter, talks about her father: This interview was filmed by Central London Samaritans . Setting up the Samaritans service When Chad was offered charge of the parish of St Stephen in the summer of 1953 he knew that the time was right for him to launch what he called a "999 for the suicidal". He was, in his own words, "a man willing to listen, with a base and an emergency telephone". The first call to the new service was made on 2nd November 1953 and this date is recognised as Samaritans' official birthday. Publicising Samaritans Chad knew he would need to get word out about the service. Luckily he wrote and illustrated articles for children's comics, so he knew many of the journalists who worked on national newspapers. The service received lots of press coverage and on December 7th, 1953 the Daily Mirror coined the term "Telephone Good Samaritans" and although Samaritans is not a religious organisation, the name has stuck and become synonymous with the idea of people being there for others struggling to cope.

The newspaper coverage worked and Chad received many callers wanting support both on the phone and face to face, as well as people wanting to help as volunteers. Initially the volunteers’ duties were to sit with the callers whilst they waited for their appointment, offering them someone to chat to, but it soon became clear that their role was much more central to the service. Often, the callers would pour out their problems to volunteers and many felt no need to speak to Chad afterwards. The simple act of listening and offering non-judgmental support was enough for most callers, and Chad realised the power of the service was in providing a safe space so people could talk and be listened to, without judgment. Growing into a nationwide service Publicity for the London-based service created a lot of interest elsewhere in the UK and as a consequence several more Samaritans centres were set up in the following years – the second being Samaritans in Edinburgh which took its first call on 1st June 1959. There are now 201 branches across the UK and Republic of Ireland. In February 1954, Chad officially handed over the task of supporting the callers to the volunteers, and Samaritans as we know it today was born.

Samaritans service today still operates on Chad’s guiding principles of confidential, non-judgmental support.

Question: Which organisation was founded by Reverend Chad Varah in 1953?
Answer: THE SAMARITANS