Wanted: reader seeks more ads in the personal classifieds

Running classified ads is, like posting letters, finding a parking space and watching five-day cricket tests, a threatened activity.

Classifieds were once gold mines for newspapers: in Melbourne and Sydney, media barons splashed out millions to gain control of the papers which ran the most of these small but remunerative items.

For the readers, these ads have been a window on the world so, when a quirky classified appeared recently, I pounced on it like a dog finding his favourite bone. A lady who described herself as a "mature academic, fond of reading into the small hours" was seeking accommodation. She confessed to being a Catholic with a dog who "has yet to make up his mind" on religious matters. Social history in three lines!

Such ads have oiled the wheels of civilisation for generations. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot had only to place a small notice in The Times or the Morning Post and solve the mystery as readers responded with the vital clue.

The Otago Daily Times’ classified columns have provided a pageant of life’s ups and downs but, for now, let’s narrow our search to the 1920s.

Dunedinites seemed careless about keeping hold of their possessions and were obliged to advertise for their return, almost always using the threatening phrase "would the person who was seen taking". Each is a short story. A 1921 plea requested: "the person who took bike from Caledonian Hotel, Anderson’s Bay Road, on Saturday night at 5.40pm kindly return, as he is known."

The advertiser is no doubt a working man from The Flat where car ownership is rare and bicycles are common, much more so than in the hill suburbs. He’s enjoying his quiet one at the Caledonian which once graced the parking lot near what’s now called the Caledonian Gymnasium. It’s a Saturday so he’s probably been in the pub for much of the afternoon, but there's still a rush to get a few more in before closing time at 6pm.

In spite of the crush of the six o’clock swill, he may have seen his bike being removed "at 5.40pm", or did he? Quoting an exact time and adding "as he is known" could be just a ploy to persuade the miscreant to return the machine fearing retribution. If he was known, why not call around with a couple of heavies and demand the bike’s return? Was the theft part of a Caledonian crime wave? In 1912 and 1925, a person was "seen taking a bike" from outside the pub. The same thief and the same bike each time?

Frustratingly, we never learn the outcome of these pleas for stolen or lost property. 

Lost and pilfered property ads proliferated, but what may be surprising is the type of item lost and, indeed, thought worth the cost of running an ad about it. The deprived often lightened things up with a touch of humour, like the man seeking his walking stick who invited the guilty party to "call back for the wooden leg" or the "hard up soldier settler" (returned servicemen elicited much sympathy in those days) who asked for the return of his horse cover "or call for the horse".

At times the lost item may have had more sentimental than monetary value like the "broken India-rubber ball" for which a reward was offered, or the kitten seen being picked up in Oxford St which should be returned "to save further trouble".

Outram baker Andrew Hendry asked for marrows taken from the school garden to be returned, at least temporarily, so that they could be exhibited at the Winter Show. Andrew had been wounded at Gallipoli and a mention of that would have guaranteed the return of the vegetables, surely?

The classifieds reveal the odd touch of skulduggery, as in one ad seeking the person who was entrusted with winning tickets on the Flying Handicap at Forbury in January 1930 won by Sunflower, which pipped a favourite Arikitoa by a strong run down the home straight. It probably paid a good price, but the "trustee" had disappeared and was, amazingly, unknown to his fellow punters.

That’s just a random smattering of classified ads from the Otago Daily Times in the 1920s.

A more wide-ranging selection would provide enough for a book like Room Two More Guns in which Stephen Winkworth explored treasures of The Times’ personal columns.

All life is revealed in those close-set columns and today we haven’t even mentioned the agony ads with young men "sober and outgoing" seeking young ladies "view outings and marriage" or the great staple of the personal column, the much spoofed, "return home, all is forgiven" ads.

They must await a future column.

— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.