BOOK OF THE DAY: KIERAN FAGANreviews Classified: The Secret History of the Personal ColumnBy HG Cocks, Random House, 228pp; £14
NEWSPAPERS HAVE always been two-way channels of communication. We journalists tend to forget that until we tread on somebody’s sensibilities and are firmly and loudly told off.
But another conversation has taken place in classified advertising columns, almost unheard. The personal column was where “Bohemian girl (24) in digs, educated, lonely, desires man pal . . .” told would-be suitors of her charms through a British magazine in the 1920s and no, reader, she probably did not marry any of them.
"A lady, who is naturally rather quiet, but at the same time likes a little amusement, is anxious to make the acquaintance of another who would go out with her occasionally to cafe or theatre in London" used the columns of TP's Weeklyin 1914 to set out her stall. TP'swas named after its founder, Thomas Power O'Connor, an Irish journalist and MP. It became a popular forum for "lonely hearts" ads in Britain. In its pages, "ladies with an artistic temperament" were much in demand.
For some the word “artistic” was the giveaway. For Scotland Yard, it was a signal that more was going on than the bringing together of clean-living people looking for marriage opportunities. Insp Plod began to look closely at advertisements that quoted from Oscar Wilde or Walt Whitman, and one Alfred Barrett, publisher of Link magazine, was found guilty of corrupting public morals and conspiring to procure acts of gross indecency in 1921 and sentenced to two years’ hard labour.
The first World War had brought another twist. "Lonely young officer, up to his neck in Flanders mud, would like to correspond with young lady (18-20), cheery and good-looking" appeared in TP's Weeklyin 1916.
A similar appeal from Driver Pennery in the Daily Chronicleresulted in the delivery of 3,000 letters and three mail bags of parcels to the trenches in February 1915, to the despair of the army postal service.
What are we to make of this, published in The Irish Timeson February 24th, 1942: "Woman will give services for free apartments: Protestant. Box E 1936"? The following advertisement, published on October 4th, 1940, gave a Leeson Street address: "Gentlewoman, honours graduate, experienced and highly successful, with vacancies for private pupils, all subjects." Leeson Street, then as now, offered "private French grinds" to those of a cosmopolitan bent, but perhaps here only the verbs were irregular?
This terse entry in the miscellaneous column of The Irish Timesappeared on November 8th, 1940: "Unable to meet Tuesday, Please communicate with Box no 1126 this office." Given the year, 1940, it is interesting to speculate if this meant more than someone waiting under Clerys clock on O'Connell Street for Mr Right. Someone with a German accent perhaps?
After the war, the phone began to replace the box number. “Girls who are interested in a better figure class, beginning shortly. PJ Cassidy, Upper Fitzwilliam Street, telephone 64650”, appeared on January 7th, 1947.
This book explores what the history of classified ads, so-called because of the headings under which the entries were listed, tell us about people's lives and subterfuges. The author has a nice line in heroes and villains of the dubious trade of contact ads. In this review I quoted Irish Timesadvertisements along with the author's own, as the pattern he describes in this quirky, readable study is universal.
We humans deploy great ingenuity in achieving our aims, by fair means or foul. Making contact with strangers, suitable or unsuitable, continues today, but print is being augmented by text messages and the internet.
Kieran Fagan is a freelance journalist