Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/395

 at Highgate, but was afterwards transferred to Earlswood, Surrey, and a branch for the eastern counties was established at Essex Hall, Colchester. Reed's last great philanthropic effort was made on behalf of incurables, of whom large numbers were discharged from the hospitals. This, begun in July 1855, was named the Royal Hospital for Incurables, and found a permanent home at Putney. The claims of these various institutions, in whose management he played a personal part, made it necessary for Reed to live in town, and he built himself a house at Cambridge Heath, Hackney, where his later life was passed. The cost of the asylums which he founded was 129,320l.

Reed resigned the pastorate of Wycliffe Chapel on the celebration of his jubilee in November 1861, and died at his house, Cambridge Heath, Hackney, on Tuesday, 25 Feb. 1862, aged 74.

In April 1816 Reed married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Jasper Thomas Holmes of Castle Hall, Reading. She bore him four sons—Andrew, Charles [q. v.], Martin, and Howard—and a daughter Elizabeth, who became the wife of Thomas Spalding.

Besides sermons and tracts and the account of the visit to America mentioned, Reed published: 1. ‘No Fiction: a Narrative founded on Facts,’ in 2 vols. 1819; 12th edit. 1 vol. 8vo, with plates. 2. ‘Martha: a Memorial of an only and beloved Sister,’ 1821. 3. ‘Rolls Plumbe: a Narrative for Children,’ 1832. 4. ‘Tracts adapted to the Revival of Religion,’ 1832. 5. ‘The Revival of Religion: a Narrative of the State of Religion at Wycliffe Chapel,’ 1839. 6. ‘Eminent Piety essential to Eminent Usefulness,’ 1842. 7. ‘The Advancement of Religion the Claim of the Times: a Course of Winter Lectures,’ 1843. 8. ‘Personal Effort for the Salvation of Men: a Manual for Christians,’ 1844. 9. ‘Charges and Sermons delivered on Special Occasions,’ 1861. In 1841 he compiled and issued a hymn-book, being a collection of psalms and hymns for public worship, nineteen of which were written by himself. Of these the following have come into common use: ‘Spirit Divine, attend our prayers,’ and ‘There is an hour when I must part.’

A full-length portrait of Reed, painted by George Paten in 1838, hangs in the board-room of the London Orphan Asylum at Clapton.

[Memoirs of the Life and Philanthropic Labours of Andrew Reed, D.D., with Selections from his Journals, edited by his sons, Andrew Reed, B.A., and Charles Reed, F.S.A., 1863, 3rd edit. 1867.] 

REED, CHARLES (1819–1881), chairman of the London school board, second son of Andrew Reed [q. v.], the philanthropist, was born at a farmhouse near Sonning in Berkshire on 20 June 1819, and was educated, successively, at Madras House, Hackney, under John Allen (1771–1839) [q. v.]; at the Hackney grammar school; and at Silcoates, near Wakefield. As a youth he was admitted a professed member of his father's church, and for a time had thoughts of becoming a minister of the gospel. In December 1836 he was apprenticed to a firm of woollen manufacturers at Leeds, and there, in 1839, with his friend Thomas Edward Plint, he started and edited a magazine called ‘The Leeds Repository.’ In 1842, in conjunction with Mr. Tyler, he founded at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London, the firm of Tyler & Reed, printers. In 1849 he left Tyler to continue the same trade with Benjamin Pardon of Hatton Garden. The firm afterwards moved to Lovell's Court, Paternoster Row. In 1861, when Reed's friend, Alderman Robert Besley, retired from the typefounding business, he took advantage of the opening thus created, and set up a typefounding factory in Fann Street, city of London. The enterprise proved highly successful, and as ‘Sir Charles Reed & Sons, Limited,’ is still a flourishing concern.

Reed in very early life interested himself in popular education. In 1844 he joined the Sunday School Union in London, and in course of time inspected numerous schools connected with the association in large towns. On one occasion he descended a coal-mine in order to visit a class of boys who only once a week came to the surface. In 1851 he won a first prize offered by the London Union for an essay on ‘The Infant Class in the Sunday School,’ and he published many new-year addresses on the education of the poor. Those called respectively ‘Diamonds in the Dust’ (1866) and ‘The Teacher's Keys’ (1872) had a wide circulation.

Reed soon interested himself in the government of the city of London. In 1855 he became a member of the common council for the ward of Farringdon Within, and actively aided in developing the Guildhall Library (cf. his Plea for a Free Public Library and Museum in the City of London, 1855) and the City of London School. He also interested himself in the preservation of Bunhill Fields burial-ground, and in the administration of the Irish Society's estates in Ulster, which he visited officially. Four times he moved that the freedom of the city should be conferred on distinguished men—on Lord Clyde, Sir James Outram, Sir Leopold