Thread by @DigiVictorian

Here's a page from the 'Matrimonial News' (1870) — packed with the Victorian equivalent of online dating profiles. It's fascinating to see how people from this period described themselves and articulated their desires.

Here's how the matchmaking process worked — a bit slower than swiping on tinder.

While some readers chose to initiate a correspondence with just one potential spouse at a time, others cast their net much wider!

Plenty of readers insisted upon exchanging 'cartes' — short for carte de visite portrait photos — before getting too involved. This 'good-looking' French essayist wanted profile pics from seven ladies!

I've posted quite a few matrimonial ads from a different Victorian paper. Here's a big collection of the best: twitter.com/DigiVictorian/…

Here's a few more pages from the same issue of the Matrimonial News — so many stories here!

Most of the adverts are direct and businesslike — gender, age, appearance, income, wants. But one or two of them tried to be a bit more romantic!

That was a reply to the mysterious Lena!

Two men on the same page both describe themselves as soldiers belonging to a 'crack regiment'!

I particularly enjoyed 'GREENSLEEVE' who described himself as 'generally festive' and made sure to add that he 'can ride'...

Alas, the anonymity of these adverts makes it almost impossible to trace the people behind them. But here’s an exception — Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (a popular comic weekly) offered a cash prize to the first couple to marry after meeting via the paper’s new matrimonial column.

Here’s the record of their marriage!

And here they are in the 1891 census a few years later, joined by two young sons.