How Matrimonial Agencies Prey on the Public—Their Degeneration Into the Worst Forms of Crime.

$1,000,000 Secured by These Get-Rich-Quick Schemers Discovered by Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge, Chicago's Famous Police Detective.

One of the most insidious forms of crime is the Matrimonial Agency. Seemingly harmless, or at most merely foolish, is the Matrimonial Agency at its inception.

But step by step within the past few years we have seen the Matrimonial Agency turned into a volcano belching forth fraud, swindling, bigamy, desertion, and finally ghastly wholesale murder.

We have seen the Matrimonial Agency sweep the whole range of the world of crime from the petty thieving of a Carson to the almost unbelievable horrors of the Gunness Farm.

THE SORROWS OF CUPID
"He Does Not See All the Rocks Ahead When He Brings Two Young People Together"—Beatrice Fairfax.

And this monster is hydra-headed. Stamp it out in one place and it immediately reappears in another. Send a "manager" to prison once, twice, ten times, and the minute the prison doors are open he is back at the old stand doing business.

Something of the tremendous efforts being put forth to stamp out this evil may be gained from the headlines of this story, where the strenuous work of Detective Wooldridge of Chicago is summarized.

Chicago has been and is today infested by a formidable community of matrimonial agencies who invade all ranks of life. They promote many specious schemes to lure the elusive dollar from the pockets of unwary victims. These operatives are sharp, smooth and unscrupulous—the most dangerous of criminal perverts.

Were the census enumerators of the United States to compile a list of the "sucker" public the gullible ones would aggregate tens of millions. There is not a township in this great nation that does not contain its portion of confiding persons who are ready to believe anything, from the rankest catch-penny advertisement to a fallacy in theological dogma.

They are willing to open up their hearts to unknown matrimonially inclined correspondents; to accept as gospel the incredible statements of impostors and to pay out money gained by hard toil for something which the reason of a child should tell them it is beyond the power of man to provide.

They are easy prey alike to religious and political impostors and unscrupulous adventurers. Investigations for years past into the innermost secrets of swindlers, and the observations incidental to official experience disclosing how victims are drawn into the net of the grafter, impel the belief that the faith of many persons passes beyond the bounds of credulity into the domain of imbecility.

Men and women who are engaged in promoting matrimonial agencies are guilty of crime. It is opposed to the fundamental principles of society. Such a practice should under no circumstances be tolerated. It is inconsistent with the highest ideals of what should constitute the proper marriage relations.

Human Derelicts Are Dupes.

Human derelicts of a low mental caliber are the dupes of these matrimonial agencies. Few people know that such schemes as these are carried out. Few know that advertisements by men of wealth, women of culture and pretty widows who seek matrimonial alliances are merely means by which scoundrels get a revenue.

Matrimonial Agents' Methods.

To describe adequately the technicalities of the marriage agencies and bureau swindlers' methods would be impossible without presenting actual copies of documents necessary to the system. Early in the investigations the discovery was made that the scores of matrimonial agencies, "introduction bureaux" and "marriage clubs" were using practically the same literature. Few departed from the stereotyped plan for "pulling the suckers on." For the most part the prospectuses and "follow-up" letters were identical.

As often happened, however, when a victim was "landed right" and ventured to Chicago from his distant rural retreat prepared to carry out in earnest the game that had been worked upon him in a spirit of mercenary recklessness, the methods of handling him were varied in respect to both finesse and effectiveness.

Any person familiar with the uses of the typewriter easily could have discovered that the "personal" letters received from time to time were nothing more than circulars printed by the thousands. So vast was the number of the gullible that seldom, if ever, was an actual, bona fide letter sent in reply to those from the victims.

Space was left at the top of the stock letters for the insertion of the name of the person to whom it was sent. In their haste the swindlers often begrudged the time necessary to change the "Dear Sir" to "Dear Miss" or "Dear Madam" when a woman was addressed on stationery intended for male clients.

Notice! She's engaged but engagements have been broken so hurry before the wedding bells have rung.... Going! Going! Third and Last Call!

No Trust Here.

The general uniformity of the literature was at first thought by me to indicate that the matrimonial agencies were banded together in a gigantic trust. But later I learned that as they increased in number the newcomers exhibited conscienceless audacity in copying the forms used by their predecessors. It was also found in some cases several matrimonial agencies were operated from one address and one or two men, or a man and his wife would represent half a dozen concerns by changing names and locations every thirty or sixty days. Because of these facts and the added fact that whoever compiled the original forms from which the others copied, realized, he was in an illegitimate business, the plagiarists were never prosecuted. Thus the buncombe administered to the suckers became uniform in phraseology.

If a person desired to make assurance doubly sure for gaining wealth and marital bliss and he applied to several agencies at the same time, the same mail would bring him letters from each matrimonial agency with which he communicated, worded identically. They would be mimeograph copies, and the only difference in their appearance would be in the printed heading indicating the name of the agency. The name of the recipient would often be written at the top in ink different in color from the body of the letter.

Working the Double Cross.

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.

Two Well-Defined Forms.

There are two well-defined forms of the "matrimonial agent." The one is the man who openly runs an agency, who advertises "golden-haired young ladies, worth half a million dollars," "blue-eyed widows of languishing temperaments" and "wealthy farmers." It is through this class of "bureau" that the great crimes of the matrimonial business have been engineered. Hoch, Mrs. Gunness, Holmes and other arch-criminals made good use of this type.

The other type is just the plain swindler. The man who works along the secondary lines, as they may be called, would scorn to be a matrimonial agent. He is either a reverend gentleman of the cloth, a minister to whom some languishing widow is looking for spiritual direction, and he thinks that she "needs she should get married," to quote the East Side phraseology; or he is a lawyer who has a wealthy client, who, not being a business woman, is incapable of running her own affairs, and he again thinks of marriage as a solution; or, again, he is "an employment agency." This secondary type is generally a cheap sort, grafting on the gullible for five or ten dollars, or even as high as $100.