Samuel Crooks

{{distinguish|Samuel Crookes}}

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{{Infobox officeholder

| honorific-prefix = The Very Reverend

| name = Samuel Crooks

| honorific-suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE|TD}}

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| order =Dean of Belfast

| term_start = 1970

| term_end = 1985

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| birth_date = 20 January 1920

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| death_date = 21 August 1986 (aged 66)

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| alma_mater = Trinity College, Dublin

| spouse = Isabel née Kennedy

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Samuel Bennett Crooks {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|OBE|TD}}[http://www.belfast-gazette.co.uk/issues/3957/supplements/561 Belfast Gazette][http://www.scotchirish.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=3370 IP board] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716233550/http://www.scotchirish.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=3370 |date=2011-07-16 }} was Dean of Belfast[http://www.belfastcathedral.org/heritage/deans-of-belfast-since-1904/ Cathedral web-site] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090307150915/http://www.belfastcathedral.org/heritage/deans-of-belfast-since-1904/ |date=2009-03-07 }} in the last third of the 20th century.“A New History of Ireland ”Moody, T.M; Martin, F.X; Byrne, F.J; Cosgrove, F: Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976 {{ISBN|0-19-821745-5}}

He was born on 20 January 1920 into an ecclesiastical family (his father was the Rev. S. B. Crooks, Rector of Killough, County Down and then St Stephen’s, Belfast)“Who was Who” 1897-1990 London, A & C Black, 1991 {{ISBN|0-7136-3457-X}} and educated at Down High School and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1944Crockford's Clerical Directory 1947-48 Oxford, OUP,1947 and became Dean's Vicar and then Vicar Choral at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, until 1949, when he was appointed Rector of St John’s, Orangefield.[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3102/2427204625_e4a289b067.jpg Photo of Church] Later he became Rector of Christ Church Lurgan, then the largest parish in the Church of Ireland, Rural Dean of Hillsborough and Archdeacon of Dromore. In 1970 he became Dean of Belfast, a post he held for 15 years. While at the Cathedral he launched the annual Christmas "sit out" to raise funds for local charities for which he became known as the Black Santa. http://www.belfastcathedral.org/black-santa/. He was made a Chaplain of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem in the Queen's Birthday Honours in February 1976., and admitted OBE in 1981.[http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/46835/pages/2901/page.pdf London Gazette] He died in 1986 aged 66 in a car crash on the Saintfield Road near Carryduff on his way to a meeting at Belfast Cathedral.

In December 2014 an Ulster History Circle blue plaque was unveiled in his memory at St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast.