Reed, Andrew

Author

b St Clement Danes, Middx (C London) 1787, d Cambridge Heath, Hackney, Middx (NE London) 1862. He followed his father in his London watchmaking business, studying at home until in 1807 Matthew Wilks of Moorfields Tabernacle persuaded him to train at Hackney Coll for the Congregational ministry. In 1811 he became the first Pastor of the church where he belonged, New Road Chapel in the St George’s-in-the-East district of E London. Increasing numbers led to the building of Wycliffe Chapel in nearby Commercial Road, where he remained until his retirement in 1861. He was active in establishing several institutions for orphans and the mentally ill in London and the SE, including homes and asylums at Clapton (The London Orphan Asylum), Colchester, Coulsdon, Earlswood and Putney. This often involved raising considerable sums of money; his philanthropic work was prompted partly by a visit he made to a dying man with a destitute family, and partly by his own mother’s experience growing up as an orphan and herself caring for other orphaned children. In 1817 he issued a hymn-book as a supplement to the Isaac Watts collection then in use, enlarged in 1825 and more so in 1842; 21 of his own hymns and some by his wife were first published there. When dying, he asked that his hymn written in Geneva, There is an hour when I must part, should be read to him. But the best-known of his hymns, included here, has appeared in a very wide range of protestant hymn-books. No.536.