A MATRIMONIAL AGENCY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13497, 25 May 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

A MATRIMONIAL AGENCY.

A MAN ALLEGED TO HAVE 100 I WIVES. i Some amusing disclosures associated with' the matrimonial agency known as the Mrs.. Edith Ross Society, at Philadelphia, were made recently. James Marshall, sixty-one years of age*, is under an indictment for false pretences, the charge being brought by one Marjorie Priel, who alleges that he married her and appropriated all her goods and chattels, and that he has 100 wives scattered over the country, who are presumably in a similar predicament. Mrs. Edith Ross nominally ran this matrimonial bureau, but Marshall, who posed as her father/appears to have been the guiding spirit in the concern. When Marjorie Friel invited the police into Marshall's home they made a remarkable haul. They seized no fewer than 2000 letters, answering Marshall's advertisement, Wanted, a wife, wealthy, refined, elderly gentleman, alone, generous; will be a devoted husband." Among these love missives were several from women asserting that they had fortunes of £20,000, who were pining for a home and children. One wrote, "May this be your Valentine, dear, ducky darling." Another said she had a husband, but she was tired of him, and wanted a new one, with money enough to divorce the old. A widow confessed to be-

ing fair, fat, and forty, but said she was lonely. One girl, in her teens, admitted i that she was not beautiful, but she was virtuous, and "beauty was only skin deep anyway." Farmers' daughters by the hundred wrote that they were sick of country life, servant girls pleaded that, they were ! wean' of the kitchen, school-teachers declared that they were tired of ; teaching the young idea how to shoot. Marshall had classified all these offers, those with dowries at the top, those with natural goodness at [the bottom." ' - ,