Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 260, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1912 — EX-CONVICT AN EVANGELIST [ARTICLE]

EX-CONVICT AN EVANGELIST

To Help Other Men to New Lives Work of Alderman Burke of Philadelphia. Philadelphia.—William Burke, whv resigned from the common council and then fled the city when he could no longer meet blackmail demands of a former prison cellmate in the Charlestown (Mass.) prison, leaving behind a written confession in which he declared that up to his coming to Philadelphia, about three years ago, he had been a criminal ever since he could remember, has become an evangelist. Burke, since his return to Philadelphia, has been running a cigar store in which he had been established by a business man whose interest was aroused by Burke’s published life story. Mr. Burke will join the Inasmuch Mission workers, located in “Hell’s Half Acre,” this city, and labor with them to save wrecked lives. Mr. Burlie made this announcement the other day at the religious service at Lemon Hill, when he responded to an invitation given by Rev. Dr. James B. Ely that he speak. He tolil the story of his life, and said that since his return to Philadelphia he had received hundreds of letters from ex-convicts asking him to aid them to mend their lives as he had done his own. The letters, he declared, have induced him to take up the work.