HIRED BRIDEGROOMS

Evening Star, Issue 20318, 29 October 1929, Page 11

HIRED BRIDEGROOMS

NEW CREEP BUSINESS A new profession, due to the enterprising spirit of the modern Greek, has made its startling and somewhat amusing ‘debut” in Athens, says a United States exchange. It is the profession of the paid bridegroom, who marries the alien girl dancer or or generally the foreign woman whose stay in Greece is declared by the police as undesirable. Regular marriage agencies were not, ot course, an unknown fruit of civilisation over there. What is a unique feature tor Athens is the way in which the “ girls have succeeded —in combination with enterprising agents—to bent the law bytransforming one of thesis agencies into a special bureau fc paid “ bridegrooms, which marries the girl threatened with expulsion from the country. After the marceremony, the bridegroom hands ihs girt over to her "friend” in the guise of secretary, and he has no other marriage responsibility. The nuptial _ veil, and the orange flowers, together with the 10,000 drachmas (£2B), are all the pair need to secure the Greek citizenship lor the alien girl, and enable her to stay as long as she pleases.