The Life and Work of Chad Varah

The Rev Dr Chad Varah, who has died aged 95, dedicated his life to both education and the provision of emotional support. In 1953 he founded Samaritans, "to befriend the suicidal and despairing". The Movement is now a household name, with 202 branches in UK and Ireland, and around 15,500 Samaritans volunteers providing confidential, non-judgemental, emotional support, around the clock.

 

Chad Varah with the original Samaritans telephone
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Dr Varah also promoted the same principle internationally through Befrienders International (Samaritans Worldwide) as the Founder Chairman, 1974-83, and then President 1983-86. Befrienders International (now called Befrienders Worldwide) now operates in more than 40 countries, including some where there is no easy access to telephones or computers, and where people will walk for many hours to receive emotional support. 

Dr Varah was a man of wide interests, originality and practicality - notably as the brains behind strip cartoon spaceman Dan Dare.

In 1935, Dr Varah conducted his first funeral, as an assistant curate – “my debut in the ministry”. The funeral was for a 13 -year-old girl who had taken her own life - because she feared she was seriously ill with venereal disease and would die a slow, painful and shameful death. In fact, she had just started to menstruate. Varah vowed at her graveside to devote himself to helping other people overcome the sort of isolation and ignorance which had caused the girl to take her own life – through a combination of education, and access to emotional support in times of need.

As the priest of various parishes in London and the North, Dr Varah proved to be one of the earlier proponents of sex education, particularly to poorly educated young people. As a result he earned the label of “a dirty old man by the time I was 25!" His teaching swelled attendances to 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 alerted society to the approach of the permissive society, usually associated with the 1960’s, with an article in the Picture Post - in 1952. Far more important to him than the outraged responses of conservative society were the 235 people who wrote in afterwards to bare their souls, 14 of whom showed signs of considering suicide as an option.

In the early fifties, three suicides a day were officially recorded in Greater London. 
Dr Varah felt that there was a great need, not being met by doctors and social workers. Some desperate people clearly preferred to turn to someone of his liberal views: and if it was so easy to save lives, why didn't he do it all the time? But then, how would he support himself, and what could be the equivalent of a "999" emergency phone number for the suicidal to get in touch? The thought of all that was involved initially deterred him.

"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." Having got that far, he set off for a holiday at the English church at Knokke, Flanders; once there, he received a quite unexpected telegram offering him the living of St Stephen Walbrook – just such a city of London parish.

Once able to devote more of his time to counselling and encouraged by the Grocers' Livery Company, Varah was soon inundated with demands for help, and he enlisted some of the laity of the parish to help - not as trained counsellors, but as ordinary human beings offering a listening ear and emotional support. 

Thus the first Samaritans volunteers were assembled. And on 2nd February 1954, they became 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."

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 Rev Dr Chad Varah was born at Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, the eldest of nine children. His father, vicar of Barton-on-Humber and a canon, named him after St Chad, the founder of his parish. In his autobiography, Before I Die Again (1992, its title referring to his interest in reincarnation), Varah describes his father as "a very strong character, a man of principle with firm beliefs and convictions, and furthermore a man with the moral courage to speak what he believed, whether it would make him popular or unpopular". Chad inherited those qualities: the extent to which he spoke what he believed often earned him respect, but was also inclined to lead him into conflict.

From Worksop College, Nottinghamshire, Varah gained an Exhibition in Natural Sciences to Keeble College, Oxford, and in 1933 obtained a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. A keen linguist, he was active in Oxford’s Russian and Slavonic Clubs, and founded its Scandinavian Club.

Despite an initial reluctance to follow in his father's footsteps, Varah then studied at Lincoln Theological College. Ordained in 1936, he was curate at St Giles, Lincoln (1935-38), 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 Doris. They had four sons, three of whom were triplets, and a daughter. Varah was a great family man, so this was one cause of his plea to the Almighty about the pressures on his time. And such was the scale of his parish work by the time he reached Clapham Junction - house visits, "open" youth clubs, teaching, and, as Chaplain of St John's Hospital, Battersea, "bawling prayers at geriatric patients" - that his stipend covered only what he had to pay his secretary. Thus from 1950 until 1961 he worked into the night as children's comic scriptwriter and visualiser for Girl and Eagle, bringing his scientific knowledge to life in comic-book space stories.

These comic titles belonged to the stable published by fellow clergyman Marcus Morris, another believer that good, popular writing could improve people's lives. This was the impetus, too, behind Varah's consultancy work for the sex education magazine Forum (1967-87); his work in this field was recognised by his appointment as Patron of the Terence Higgins Trust, the UK's largest HIV and AIDS charity (1987-99).

In 1972, his TV play Nobody Understands Miranda, part of a six-episode BBC series called The Befrienders, loosely based on experiences that took place in Samaritans, was broadcast, of which he was very proud. Varah’s battle for well informed sex education continued into his eighties: in 1992 he founded, and from 1999 was secretary of, 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.

The desire to speak his mind never left Varah: some would say that it was what had kept him going. Many were the times, in his latter years, that one was tempted to say to him: "Oh Chad, why don't you leave it alone and just enjoy the love and respect that surrounds you?" But he would not easily drop an issue in which he believed.

Despite any disagreements he may have had with those whom, in time, he handed these organisations over to - more than once did Samaritans remind him that it was literally impossible for him to resign as Founder - it was his inspiration and determination that created and developed them. 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 needs of society and developments in technology – the emotional 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 providing emotional support through the process of befriending - what Varah always called "active listening therapy" - to those who, without that support, might be in danger of taking their own lives. That is the Rev Dr Chad Varah's greatest legacy.

His wife died in 1993, and he is survived by four of his children.

Edward Chad Varah, priest and founder of Samaritans, born 12th November 1911; died 8th November  2007.

Read the official statement

Contribute to the Book of Condolence

Contribute to the ongoing work of Samaritans in memory of Chad Varah

Notes to editors

It is the aim of Samaritans to make emotional health a mainstream issue. Samaritans' vision is for a society where fewer people die by suicide because people are able to share feelings of emotional distress openly without fear of being judged. Samaritans believes that offering people the opportunity to be listened to in confidence, and accepted without prejudice, can alleviate despair and suicidal feelings.

Samaritans is a registered charity, founded in 1953, which offers 24-hour confidential emotional support to anyone in emotional distress. The service is offered by 17,000 trained volunteers and is entirely dependent on voluntary support. Across the UK, you can call Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 (1850 60 90 90 in the Republic of Ireland) for the price of a local call. You can text Samaritans on 07725 90 90 90 (0872 60 90 90 in the Republic of Ireland). You can also write to Samaritans at Chris, PO Box 9090, Stirling, FK8 2SA, send an email to jo@samaritans.org or if you are deaf or hard of hearing use the single national minicom number 08457 90 91 92 (1850 60 90 91 in the Republic of Ireland).