Maiden lady, age not mentioned, height 5 ft., weight 120
lbs.; worth $35,000.
And all this, ridiculous, murderous and otherwise, is all outside the
pale of the law. The matrimonial agency is a crime _per se_. It is a
criminal institution. It has been pronounced to be such by the best
and foremost judges of the United States, Germany and Great Britain.
Judge Klerbach, sitting in the case of a marriage broker at
Goettingen, Germany, in 1903, declared that the marriage broker was a
criminal in intent, from the very nature of his business.
In the celebrated case of Alan Murray vs. Jeanie McDonald at
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1898, Justice Grahame pronounced from the
judicial seat one of the most scathing arraignments of the marriage
bureau ever delivered. "Leeches upon the body social, blood-suckers,
destroyers of womanhood, abominations of the bottomless pit," were
some of the phrases used by Justice Grahame in denouncing Murray.
In the petty sessions at Tinahely, Ireland, Justice O'Gorman in
May, 1905, is reported in the Wicklow People, a newspaper which has
a wide circulation in the South of Ireland, as fiercely denouncing
the marriage broker business. The Justice declared that the marriage
broker was a wolf, "preying upon the weaknesses of humanity, a
pander to the lowest instincts"; that he had no right to demand the
interference of the law in his behalf, but rather that the law should
always be exercised for the suppression of his nefarious traffic.