Contact ad
A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an advert in a lonely hearts column. In India, it is a dating ad or matrimonial ad.
The earliest personal ads were placed in newspapers among other classified ads and typically had matrimony as the objective. As interest in personal ads grew, newspapers provided personals sections specifically for those ads. Later, newspapers and magazines for the sole purpose of personal ads were published. Lonely hearts clubs were organized in the 20th century to provide listings of ads to their fee-paying members. With the advent of the Internet, personal ads began to appear on online sites as well, eventually turning into profiles on dating sites and apps.
Personal ads have been described by a researcher as "a valuable way of finding potential mates for those whose social world has been artificially constrained by contemporary urban life and the demands of modern employment practices". However, personals have also been used by criminals—con artists, fraudsters, and killers—to find and lure victims.
Public opinion toward personal ads varies over time, from disapproval and suspicion in the 17th and 18th centuries to a patriotic service in the United States during the Civil War and to general public acceptance in modern-day.
Abbreviations
Due to space limitations in print ads, abbreviations for the vocabulary of personal ads became conventional in the 20th century. Some of the earliest abbreviations appeared in personal ads in Gay Times.
Some abbreviations describe the advertiser and target of the ad by marital status, ethnic group, and sex, such as MWM (married white male) and DBF (divorced black female). Some indicated a common characteristic, such as GSOH (good sense of humor) and NS (non-smoking).
In India, matrimonial ads use a unique shorthand so ads can fit within the restraint of 50 words or less. For example, BHP stands for biodata (résumé), horoscope, and photograph; "veg" means vegetarian; and VF is the abbreviation for very fair (light-skinned).[
Crimes
Theft, fraud, and seduction were the crimes most common with matrimonial ads. By 1900, most jurisdictions in the United States had criminalized seduction, allowed punitive and exemplary damages for breach of promise actions, and increased recognition of common-law marriages, all of which helped reduce some crimes associated with matrimonial ads.
In Sweden, the colloquial saying "sun and spring" (Sol-och-vårande [sv]) to mean "love fraud" refers to fraudster Karl Vesterberg, who placed personal ads in the early 1900s, signing each with sol-och-vårande. The most famous "sun and spring" was Gustaf Raskenstam [sv], who used personal ads to defraud over a hundred women of money in the 1940s.
The U.S. Postal Service warned consumers of fraudulent activity associated with "lonely hearts clubs" in its 1967 Mail Fraud booklet. Some people use personal ads to ask for money, supposedly to travel to meet the other person. The booklet describes one individual who claimed to have a potential fortune in oil claims, needing "only another few thousand dollars" for development. Earning an estimated $50,000 a year through personal ads, he was eventually convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to prison.[31] In one instance, a man placed personal ads in publications throughout the United States, claiming to be a single Asian female, and eventually bilking over 400 men of approximately $280,000. He later pled guilt to mail fraud.
From 2011 to 2016, crimes related to online dating increased by almost 400 percent.
Although murder was more rare than theft and fraud, a number of murderers used personal ads to find potential victims. Notable examples include:
- Belle Gunness was a serial killer with at least 14 victims, active 1884–1908.
- Johann Otto Hoch, also known as the Bluebeard Murderer and the Chicago Bluebeard, was a bigamist and murderer, believed to have killed up to 50 victims, active 1890–1905.
- Béla Kiss was a serial killer in Hungary with at least 24 victims, active between 1900 and 1914.
- Helmuth Schmidt was a suspected serial killer of 1–4+ victims, active 1913–1917.
- Henri Désiré Landru, nicknamed the Bluebeard of Gambais, was a serial killer in France with at least 11 victims, active from 1915 to 1919.
- Eva Brandon Rablen answered a personal ad in 1928 and then poisoned her new husband three days after the wedding, a murder that the "Ogden Standard Examiner" called "the most notorious case of its type".: 63–66
- Harry Powers was a serial killer of five victims, active 1927–1931.
- Nannie Doss, was a serial killer of 11 victims, active 1927–1954.
- Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, dubbed the Lonely Hearts Killers, were a serial killer couple suspected of up to 20 victims, active 1947–1949.
- Harvey Glatman, known as the Lonely Hearts Killer and the Glamour Girl Slayer, was an American serial killer with 3-4 victims, active from 1957 to 1958.
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