page_title: Beadle
section_title: In religion
hierarchical_section_title: Beadle / In religion
caption_attribution_description: English: From "Character Sketches from Charles Dickens, Pourtrayed by Kyd", or "The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by Kyd." Scanned and archived at http://www.gallery.oldbookart.com/main.php where it was marked as Public Domain.
context_page_description: A beadle, sometimes spelled "bedel", is an official of a church or synagogue who may usher, keep order, make reports, and assist in religious functions; or a minor official who carries out various civil, educational, or ceremonial duties on the manor.
  The term has pre-Conquest origins in Old English, deriving from the Old English bydel, itself deriving from beodan. In Old English it was a title given to an Anglo-Saxon officer who summoned householders to council. It is also known in Medieval Latin as bedellus.
  The Domesday Book refers to Beadles as bedelli or undersheriffs of manors.
context_section_description: In England, the word came to refer to a parish constable of the Anglican Church, one often charged with duties of charity. A famous fictional constabulary beadle is Mr. Bumble from Charles Dickens's classic novel Oliver Twist, who oversees the parish workhouse and orphanage of a country town more than 75 miles from London. The work of a real constabulary beadle of Whitechapel in that period may be exemplified by Richard Plunkett.
  In the Church of Scotland, the title is used for one who attends the minister during divine service as an assistant.
  In Judaism, the term beadle or sexton (in Hebrew: שמש‎, romanized: shammash) is sometimes used for the gabbai, the caretaker or "man of all work", in a synagogue. Moishe the Beadle, the caretaker of a synagogue in Sighet in the 1940s, is an important character in Night by Elie Wiesel.
caption: Mr. Bumble, a beadle in Oliver Twist, by 'Kyd' (Joseph Clayton Clarke)
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