16-Despair is my Parish
Written by Stephen Grenfell
Research by Michael Hardwick
Series edited and produced by Alan Burgess
During the last three-and-a-quarter years hundreds of men and women in the London area have rung MANsion House 9000 with a particular purpose in mind. All of them have been human beings in despair-human beings for whom life no longer seemed to have any purpose-many of them men and women on the verge of suicide. They dialled an organisation called ' Telephone Samaritans,' started and maintained by the Rev.
Chad Varah, Rector of St. Stephen, Walbrook. Tonight's programme reconstructs the case of a young woman who contemplated suicide and who dialled ' Telephone Samaritans ' because she sought the comfort and succour she had found nowhere else.