An arranged Valentine

How did you find a wife or husband in late 1800’s New Zealand?
There were some societal rules you couldn’t break. Women couldn’t (or shouldn’t) go to a pub, men needed to be introduced and chaperons were a thing.
So what if you could go to someone who could arrange a marriage?
Marriage was as much a business and financial partnership as it was a love match.
And Thomas Brown Hannaford had the answer.
As well as being a debt collector, accountant, inventor, rates collector and land agent, he was a marriage broker.
In February 1867, Hannaford established a registry service, advertising services for people looking for positions but it quickly moved into a matrimonial service agency.
Advertisements ran in national newspapers saying things like farmers looking for a valuable wife, educated widow looking to negotiate, asking for skills like chicken rearing, sewing, making bread and with flowery compliments like capable of spreading sunshine in any home.
He also married those he matched up.
In particular was the desire of farmers who often worked in isolated rural locations, to have a wife. Hannaford claimed he had found 115 suitable wives for such men and by 1890 he claimed 180 couples.
He refused to match up anyone in bad health or was not considered respectable by the time’s standards.
In many ways he was responding to the influx of young women created by a government campaign launched to bring them to New Zealand.
He asked the young men to complete a questionnaire that included, among other things, their income and prospects, something women would likely not consider a match without.
Hannaford was also at pains to advertise privacy and discretion.
James Thomas Browne Hannaford was born in 1823 in Brixham, Devon in England to James Hannaford and Ann Browne.
Initially he worked on the docks then was a clerk to a railway contractor.
He married Ann Jarvis in 1850 and they had several children before divorcing and making his way to New Zealand in 1859.
He worked at various jobs for a while before starting a land agency and debt collection agency which led to the matrimonial agency.
He married again in 1875 to Anne Mary Josephine Bethel. They had several children but tragically most died as infants.
Thomas, as he was called, died on July 15, 1890, and while there are no records, his place of burial was advertised in the papers as the Symonds St Cemetery.​