2. A beadle (B. E.): apparently the term was applied to all kinds of watchmen.
Verb (thieves’).—To imprison: cf. bekaan = imprisoned (Dutch thieves’).
1861. C. READE, The Cloister and the Hearth, lv. The circle with the two dots was writ by another of our brotherhood, and it signifies as how the writer … was BECKED, was asking here, and lay two months in Starabin.
