Personal Ads Then and Now
Placing a personal ad online to find your perfect match doesn’t seem terribly innovative anymore these days. There are plenty of websites for personal ads and online matchmaking where you can seek and find your perfect match. The time of exclusively printed ads seems like ancient history already, but can you even imagine a time before personal ads? A time when the concept of personal ads was unheard of? A time where you had to rely on being introduced to your perfect match socially or resort to your spinster aunt’s amateur matchmaking?
Well, believe it or not, the first known personal ad was published a mere 281 years ago. Helen Morrison, an ageing spinster, placed a personal ad in the Manchester Weekly Journal in 1727, looking for a nice person to share her life with. Obviously, the matchmaking efforts of family and friends hadn’t produced a suitable husband, so the clever lady took matters into her own hands. Good for her!
Unfortunately, the popular opinion on personal ads was not quite what it is today, so poor Helen Morrison was sent off to a mental institution. Overreaction, much? Looks like placing a personal ad to find your perfect match was considered quite a crazy thing to do in the 18th century.
Fortunately, personal ad-related insanity quickly became a thing of the past and by the beginning of the 19th century, personal ads were appearing in newspapers across the country. Particularly farmers tried to find their perfect match through personal ads, leading to charming personal ads like ‘Seven wives wanted,’ placed by seven lonely farmers.
Also, early personal ads were nothing if not honest, pointing out personal shortcomings and specifying the desired worldly assets of their perfect match.
Today, of course, placing a personal ad online is infinitely easier (also, no involuntary incarceration is involved) and the be2 success stories prove how easy it can be to find your perfect match through a matchmaking website. Place your personal ad now - it’s free!
