FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Elvira Tayloe, beautiful blonde dime-a-dance girl, married six sailors in quick succession, then settled herself comfortably while generous Uncle Sam sent her allotments totaling $300 a month! Mickey MacDougall, famous “card detective” and nemesis of petty crooks, discloses the slick tricks of Elvira Tayloe and other “allotment brides” in “Legions of Larceny,” second of a series or startling articles exposing wartime rackets . . . in the American Weekly, supplement of this Sunday’s Record.
[The Evening Sun (Hanover, Pa.), Jun. 3, 1944, p. 3;
advertisement for: Mickey Macdougall,
“Legions of Larceny; No. 2—Allotment Brides,” American Weekly (Magazine section
of San Antonio Light) (San Antonio, Tx.), Jun. 4, 1944, p. 4?]
***
EXCERPT (Article 2 of 2): It is
axiomatic that a sailor has a sweetheart in every port, but Elvira Tayloe put reverse English on the idea. She had a sailor in
every porthole. Well, maybe not
that many, but Elvira did manage to accumulate an even half-dozen seagoing
husbands in less than a year. And she collected dependency allotments on all six.
Generous
Uncle Samuel allows the wife of a service man $28 a month, and the husband is
forced to kick in with an additional $22. So Elvira, slim, sleek and 17, was
getting $50 a month, per mate—$300 in all. And that ain’t hay.
Elvira’s
technique was perfect. She worked as a dime-a-dance girl at one of Norfolk’s
hot spots; hence met plenty of lonely service men. The blond temptress
preferred the Navy (she said soldiers propositioned; never proposed). Anyhow,
whatever the reason, she succeeded in wedding six sailors the day before each
left for the South Pacific. She was hard at work on her seventh when her
marrying career was brought to a sudden end by the kind of coincidence which
should happen only in a movie.
Two
of her lovin’ spouses met in Australia, compare photographs, and decided they’d
been gypped, A complaint to the legal advisory bureau of the Navy Department
saved the sailors $22 a month each and put Elvira in jail. She was convicted,
not of defrauding the government, but of bigamy.
[Mickey MacDougall, “Legions of Larceny; No.
2—Allotment Brides,” American Weekly (Magazine section of San Antonio Light)
(San Antonio, Tx.), Jun. 4, 1944, p. 4?]
***
For more cases of this type see: “War-Marriage Vampires”& “Allotment Annies"
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