Educated at the University of London (now University College). Practised at 4 Prince’s Street, Hanover Square, at 44 Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, and at 15 Bucklersbury, EC. He was Surgeon to the Margaret Street Infirmary for Consumption, to the Carlisle Memorial Refuge for Female Convicts, and to the 38th Middlesex (Artists’) Volunteer Rifles. He was, too, a Fellow of the Ethnological Society. He was the intimate friend and medical adviser of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Forster’s *Life* makes very frequent mention of him and shows that to his care and skill Dickens owed much, especially during the last period of his life when he was giving the readings which proved so exhausting to his health and strength in 1869-1870. Beard died on Aug 10th or 13th, 1893.