Joseph Bancroft Reade

Rev. Joseph Bancroft Reade FRS FRMS (5 April 1801 – 12 December 1870) was an English clergyman, amateur scientist and pioneer of photography.

Born Leeds, he was the eldest of six sons and two daughters. His father, Thomas Shaw Bancroft Reade (1776–1841), was a merchant and Christian pamphleteer who actively supported the British and Foreign Bible Society. His mother, Sarah née Paley (d. 1825), was a relative of William Paley. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School, Trinity College, Cambridge and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating in 1825.

Reade was ordained a deacon in the Church of England and became curate of Kegworth, Leicestershire. He married Charlotte Dorothy Farish (1796–1882), niece of William Farish in 1825, and the couple parented three children, none of whom lived beyond 21 years of age. Reade was ordained priest in 1826 and took his master's degree in 1828.

In 1829, Reade became curate of Halifax Parish Church where he befriended amateur meteorologist John Waterhouse, who would later invent the Waterhouse stop. In 1832 he took a part-time curacy at Harrow Weald, and in 1834 became proprietor of a school in Peckham.

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