
Alternative Courtship: Matrimonial Advertisements in the 19th Century - Avawelles
https://mimimatthews.com/2016/01/04/alternative-courtship-matrimonial-advertisements-in-the-19th-century/
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firebones
I strongly encourage everyone who is interested in this to carve out some time
to read the old scanned newspapers at
[https://news.google.com/newspapers](https://news.google.com/newspapers) Pick
a time range, then follow along reading the paper in a kind of "this day in
history" fashion from a variety of papers from the west to midwest to east
coast, not just to see what was important then, but how accounts changed.

It is fascinating to read accounts from 120-150 years ago. These kind of
"classifieds" are cool too--"situation wanted" ads where single women are
seeking domestic employment, and cases where men are looking for odd jobs. And
then reading about the accidents--deaths from train incidents, boiler
explosions, freak deaths. It's easy to get lost in a different time while
seeing connections to media and what interested people then and now.

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personlurking
I second this. It's been a hobby of mine for a few years and there are many
instances when I've caught myself losing track of time while doing it. The
only difference is I do it with foreign 'Hemerotecas' (news libraries). In
fact, I'm keen to write a book about my findings.

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currywurst
In India, these forms of advertisements are still a primary way by which
millions of couples meet each other. The parents are often involved in pre-
filtering alliances.

The electronic version of this (e.g.
[http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/](http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/) and the
like) are the original e-commerce successes on the Indian Web, and are still
going really strong.

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drewg123
It is interesting how up front they were about income. That seems much more
efficient than trying to advertise wealth by buying "middle age crisis" style
sports cars :)

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Avawelles
I think men stated their income to prove that they could support a wife and
children.

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NTDF9
This still happens in India. Parents of daughters are direct about income
requirements. Women want men who earn more than them, down to the rupee. Men
want women who are young, beautiful and homely. All this is blatantly
specified in the ads in newspapers.

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splitbrain
Can someone explain what "exchange of miniatures" means in this context?

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Avawelles
Miniatures were small painted portraits. It would be like exchanging
photographs today.

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splitbrain
Ah that makes sense! Thank you.

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firebones
19th century Snapchat, then?

(All the more reason to read old newspapers: to see what social constructs are
timeless (and therefore possibly more fundamentally sound).

