65. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Key words/phrases: Ex-nurse and novelist Monica Dickens, Charles Dickens, St Paul's Girl's School London, U.S. Naval Officer Roy Stratton of Massachusetts, Rev.Chad Varah of The Samaritans organisation, Church of St Stephen Walbrook London, Mr Catchpole, S.R.N, Joyce Green Hospital, “Emma Chisit.”

No. 65

"She fed on gossip and scandal and if you had some to impart you could always be sure of an audience from Nurse Horrocks, and when there was none, she would readily concoct some intrigue to keep herself going."

So wrote Monica Dickens, the ex-nurse and novelist, in “One Pair of Feet” (1942). Monica, a great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, rejected her upper middle class background when she expelled from St Paul's Girl's School in London and decided to go into “service” as a cook and servant.

Soon afterwards she became a student nurse in one of the London teaching hospitals and later wrote her account of life as a trainee nurse. She left nursing soon afterwards and did various other jobs, many of which provided inspiration for her future novels.

In 1951 she married a U.S. naval officer and they moved to New England where they adopted two girls. Roy Stratton died in 1985, at which time Monica returned to the U.K. where she continued to write, until her death on Christmas Day 1992.

Many people are familiar with her down-to-earth style of writing and perhaps you are one of the many nurses who have particularly enjoyed her nursing reminiscences however, something that fewer people will perhaps be aware of is that she helped to found the first American branch of the Samaritans in Massachusetts in 1974.

I am hazarding a guess here that she was inspired by the Anglican vicar, the Rev Chad Varah, who died in England last week and who single-handedly founded the phone-line help service for people contemplating suicide.

Later on the organisation became known as The Samaritans and after a period of rapid growth in Britain it provided a model for similar organisations in many other parts of the world.

In 1935 Varah conducted his first funeral whilst a young curate in Lincoln. The deceased person was a 14-year-old girl who had committed suicide because she thought that she suffering from a venereal disease whereas in fact she had simply started menstruating. The turning point for Varah however came in 1953 when he read in a newspaper that there were three suicides a day occurring in the Greater London area.

This coincided with an invitation to become the rector of St Stephen Walbrook, a Church of England benefice in the City of London. This beautiful Wren-designed church, sensitively rebuilt after wartime bombing, had no regular congregation and he accepted the appointment on the understanding that he would be free to use the crypt as the base for a new kind of outreach ministry - to desperate people.

He made it known that anyone contemplating suicide could phone him at any time of the day or night and soon calls began pouring in. Thus, what would later become a worldwide ministry was started by him and a small number of unqualified volunteers.

Chad Varah seems unlikely to be forgotten as the result of creating this lifeline organisation that has been responsible for saving millions of lives. However, it was whilst I was thinking about Monica Dickens’s account of her nursing experiences and the fact that she had formed the first branch of The Samaritans in the USA that I found myself once again thinking about the death of Mr Catchpole, SRN at Joyce Green Hospital.

He was - as some readers will know - the Theatre Superintendent in Joyce Green Hospital during the late 60s who for some reason (or reasons) took his own life in the operating theatre complex late one night.

One of the tragedies was that left a wife and several children behind but another was that he was a much-respected nurse who obviously desperately needed help but who didn’t cry out or who wasn’t heard.

In November 1964 Monica Dickens was autographing books for customers in a book shop in Sydney. She was approached by an Australian woman who handed her an open copy of a book and simply said: “Emma Chisit?” Monica misunderstood what the woman meant and inscribed the words “To Emma Chisit” inside the front cover, whereas in fact the customer was actually asking “How much is it ?”

A humorous mistake of course … but perhaps “Emma Chisit?” is still an extremely pertinent question this week as we remember the value that Chad Varah and his co-workers placed upon human life and also reflect perhaps upon the tragic loss of Mr. Catchpole at Joyce Green Hospital.