Sir Charles Reed FSA (19 June 1819 – 25 March 1881) was a British politician who served as Member of Parliament for Hackney and for St Ives,[1] Chairman of the London School Board, Director and Trustee of the original Abney Park Cemetery Joint Stock Company, Chairman of the Bunhill Fields Preservation Committee, associate of George Peabody, lay Congregationalist, and owner of a successful commercial type-founding business in London.

Charles Reed was educated at Madras House, Mare Street, Hackney, which is said to have been the most distinguished 19th-century school in the enlightened tradition of Ainsworth.

In 1839, with his friend Thomas Edward Plint, he started and edited a magazine called The Leeds Repository, and on returning to London he co-founded the firm of Tyler & Reed, printers and typefounders in 1842.

At one time Reed's had been the larger of the two firms but it had difficulties in financing a modernisation programme as typography changed, and its once valuable equipment became out of date.

Designs such as the Clarendon typeface, which Charles Reed had originally acquired from Robert Besley & Sons of the Fann Street foundry, became very marketable once re-cast using new technology.

[8] Charles' son Talbot Baines Reed (1852–1893), an author of books for boys, wrote the standard reference work on the history of typefounders in England, which went through may editions.

One night they went off in a tremendous sea to save a French barque; but though they secured the crew, a steam-tug claimed the prize and towed her into Ramsgate Harbour.

The Broadstairs men instituted proceedings to secure the salvage, but they were beaten in a London law court, where they were overpowered by the advocacy of a powerful company.

The bill was paid, the men were liberated and brought home to their families, and the considerable balance... of the amount was invested, the interest to be applied to rewarding boatmen who, by personal bravery, had... saved life on the coast.

Lieutenant William Gill stood against him for the Conservatives with support from the Independent newspaper, which dubbed the constituency notorious hitherto as a hotbed of Radicalism.

Until its closure in the mid–19th century, many historically important people (particularly those whose religious beliefs dissented from the Established Church), chose this as their place of quiet interment on the edge of the city.

The poet Robert Southey gave Bunhill Fields the memorable appellation the Campo Santo of the Dissenters; a phrase that also came to be applied to its "daughter" cemetery at Abney Park.

Following the work of the committee, the City of London Corporation obtained an Act of Parliament in 1867 for the Preservation of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground as a public open space with seating, gardens, and for the restoration of some of its worthiest monuments, including one to Daniel Defoe funded by The Christian World and unveiled by Reed.

He is buried at Abney Park Cemetery near the Church Street (southern) entrance, in a grave marked by a grey granite obelisk.