The usual beginning is a small subscription fee paid for a
"matrimonial" paper. This paper contains alleged descriptions of men
and women, principally the latter, who are claimed by the publisher
to be seeking wives or husbands through the matrimonial agency. The
subscriber who becomes interested in any of the descriptions is
made to pay a fee for more detailed information and alleged record
of the financial circumstances of the person. There is sometimes
an additional fee for a photograph. This picture may or may not be
one of the person described, but that matters little. Almost any
old photograph will serve the purpose. In all the raids made on
matrimonial agencies collections of photographs have been found.
That tens of thousands of otherwise intelligent men and women
should either entrust pictures of themselves to an agency by which
it is to be sent out to unknown persons, or should even begin such
negotiations as those carried on through the matrimonial agency, is
incomprehensible.
The money derived in the aggregate from subscriptions to the
matrimonial paper, the fees for particulars and those for photographs
and miscellaneous "services" amount to large sums. With many of the
agencies the services stop at this point, but many others undertake
personal introductions of lonesome maids and widows to the invariably
"honest and affectionate" bachelors and widowers, and when this is
done there are other fees, depending altogether on how much the
victims appear to be willing to stand.
A large number have been found and suppressed in which there was but
one lonesome maid or widow and one honest and affectionate bachelor
or widower, the former being the woman accomplice of the manager of
the agency and the latter the manager himself. They answer love-lorn
correspondents of both sexes and select for victims those believed
to have the most money. If the assistant to the manager is posing as
the possible bride in the case the wife hunter must make satisfactory
settlements with the manager for conducting the negotiations, and
this amount, with that which the accomplice is able to secure from
the victim, amounts often to a considerable sum. After the victim
is separated from his money something happens to prevent the happy
conclusion of the marriage negotiations.