The campaign was started at the very beginning of the year and continued uninterruptedly until the end of it. Early in March the metropolitan police received orders to search most rigorously the Jewish residences and examine the passports. In the police stations special records were instituted for the Jews. St. Petersburg was to be purged of the odious Hebrew tribe. The contrivances employed were no longer novel, and were the same which had been successfully tried in other cities. The Jews were raided in regular fashion. Those that were found with doubtful claims to residence in the capital were, frequently accompanied by their families, immediately dispatched to the proper railroad stations, escorted by policemen.... The time for departure was measured by hours. The term of expulsion was generally limited to twenty-four hours, or forty-eight hours, as if it involved the execution of a court-martial sentence. And yet, the majority of the victims of expulsion were people who had lived in St. Petersburg for many years, and had succeeded in establishing homes and business places, which could not be liquidated within twenty-four hours or thereabout.... The hurried expulsions from the capital resulted in numerous conversions to Christianity.... Amusing stories circulated all over town concerning Jews who had decided to join the Christian Church, and had applied for permission to remain in the capital for one or two weeks--the time required by law for a preliminary training in the truths of the new faith--but whose petition was flatly refused because the police believed that a similar training might also be received within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement.