The Good Samaritan

Reverend Edward Chad Varah, CH, CBE (November 12, 1911 – November 8, 2007) was a British Anglican priest, best known as the founder of The Samaritans in 1953, the world's first crisis hotline organization, offering non-religious telephone counselling to those contemplating suicide.

He was born in the village of Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, where his father was an Anglican clergyman. The eldest of nine children, he was educated at Worksop College in north Nottinghamshire and Keble College, Oxford University, and ordained in the Church of England in 1936. He trained at Lincoln Theological College. In 1940 he married Doris Whanslaw in Wandsworth.

As an assistant curate in Lincoln in 1935, he was standing in at the funeral of a 14-year-old girl, and asked the undertaker why the girl was being buried in unconsecrated ground. He was told she had killed herself because she had mistaken menstruation for a serious disease. His reaction was: "I stood at the end of the grave and I said, little girl, I never knew you, but I promise you that you have changed my life and I shall teach children about sex." He kept his promise, although the explicit nature of his advice to children and young couples scandalised many people in the Church.

As vicar of St Paul's, at Clapham in south London, he realised that a significant number of people coming to see him were talking of suicide. He thought a special telephone line might help people in distress, but there were many demands on his time. He was a father of five, including triplet sons, he wrote strip-cartoons for Eagle and Girl comics and was the scientific consultant for the Eagle hero, Dan Dare.

But the idea of a help line became a reality when he became rector of St Stephen Walbrook, a church in the City of London whose only parishioner was the Lord Mayor from 1953 until 2003, when he retired at the age of 92. He founded The Samaritans with the stated aim that it would be an organisation "to befriend the suicidal and despairing." The Samaritans grew rapidly, complemented by a dramatic fall in the suicide rate, and its many branches in Britain and around the world now handle millions of calls every year. Chad Varah always insisted that it should not be a religious organisation.

In 1994, he officiated at the marriage of Lady Sarah Chatto, only daughter of Princess Margaret to the actor, Daniel Chatto. He was awarded the CBE in 1982 and created a Companion of Honour in 2000.

He died peacefully in his sleep at a hospital in Basingstoke, Hants on 8 November 2007 at a age of 95 but his work which has helped the lives of many will continue to live on.