Definition of "beadle"

Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,The children walking two and two in red and blue and green:Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.

1789, William Blake, “Holy Thursday”, in Songs of Innocence

The beadle […] generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution […] The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish him.

1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, page 101

Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with him—it’s like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing—everybody walks in the Temple Gardens.

1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 54, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, page 142

His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman.

1929 September, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), page 9