Below is an index of individuals who received assistance from the Beaminster Poor Law Union in the 1850s, extracted from the following sources:

BG/BE/A/1/2 – Minutes of the Beaminster Union Board of Guardians (Dorset History Centre): lists of able-bodied individuals who received relief, usually because of their own or their families’ illness. Sometimes relief was given for funeral expenses or transport costs to hospital. The following periods have been transcribed: April-May 1855, January-December 1857, and March 1859. The reference (in the final column) includes the date of the guardians’ meeting and the page number of the minute book.

PE/BE: OV 9/2 – ‘List of Paupers whose Relief is charged against the Parish, for the Half-Year ending Michaelmas 1849’ in the Beaminster Overseers of the Poor’s Papers (Dorset History Centre). The list gives the names of those receiving outdoor relief because of infirmity and sickness (as well as widows, orphans, ‘idiots’, and mothers of illegitimate children) and the original includes the amount of money paid to each individual in cash and kind.