"Marriage Agencies" The Rocky Mountain Echo
[Pincher Creek AB] 2 Aug. 1904.
A new matrimonial agency is being extensively advertised
throughout Western Canada by a London, England firm, which
evidently thinks that the bachelors of the West are in a
deplorable state and anxious one and all to wed. . . .
Doubtless there are less favoured spots than Pincher Creek
in the great North-West, and the obliging offer of the firm
to provide a wife for five dollars down and forty-five on
thirty days after the safe performance of the marriage
ceremony will probably meet many takers.
The advertisement is nicely worded. For instance it
described the terrible fate to which thousands of "good,
intelligent and attractive girls" are destined in England,
nothing but the prospect of "living and dying as old maids",
surely a horrible destiny. Will not the youth and chivalry
of Western Canada at once rise up and rescue these damsels
from such a fate? . . . The applicant besides his five
dollars must send such particulars of himself as "a sensible
girl would expect" and here is where the hardships will come
in. For if the application had not to be accompanied by
references from a clergyman or the police, all would be left
to the honesty of the man himself.
Reprinted by permission of
Women's
Press. |