Edward Pickard (3 December 1714 - 10 February 1778) was an English dissenting minister who founded the Orphan Working School in 1758. The Orphan school would eventually become a school in

Reigate Reigate ( ) is a town status in the United Kingdom, town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book of 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'', and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The ea ...

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. He also led a group who tried to change the law restricting the rights of dissenting ministers.

Biography

Pickard was born in

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in 1714. He attended a number of dissenting schools before taking up with a congregation. However his views changed through

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and he moved on through a number of churches before coming to London as an afternoon preacher. In 1758 he was working as an assistant to Thomas Newman at the Presbyterian meeting in Carter Lane. Whilst there he was the leading light of fourteen people who met and founded the Orphan Working School.John Stephens, ‘Pickard, Edward (1714–1778)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 18 Feb 2010
/ref> In the following year, Newman died and he took over the congregation. Between 1772 and 1774, Pickard gathered together the dissenting ministers in order that the terms of the 1689 Toleration Act for dissenting clergy could be modified. Under his leadership parliament twice considered a bill to modify the law. Both were unsuccessful and it was not until Pickard and many had lost interest that a new attempt was made in 1779. Pickard died of a fever in 1778, outliving Frances Sanderson, his wife. His orphan school went on under the guidance of Joseph Soul to arrive in the twentieth century where it was transformed into an orphanage for the poor into

The Royal Alexandra and Albert School The Royal Alexandra and Albert School is an all-through school, all-through co-educational boarding school near Reigate, Surrey. The headmaster as of 2022 is Morgan Thomas. The Royal Alexandra and Albert School Act 1949 (12, 13 & 14 Geo. 6. c. ...

, a boarding school in Surrey.Founders day speech

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pickard, Edward Clergy from Warwickshire 1714 births 1778 deaths English Dissenters Founders of English schools and colleges Burials at Bunhill Fields 18th-century British philanthropists