I've been looking through a lot classifieds from around 1910, specifically the For Sale and Wanted ads (mostly in Oregon), and there are a lot of rail tickets listed. In the ads the people almost always specify what they look like.
For example one woman says "Lady's ticket to Omaha; described stout, light hair and young" another example is "Wanted - Ticket to Chicago or Kansas City, medium, dark."
I've tried looking up photos of tickets on google but from the ones I've seen they don't have any mention of what the people look like. Who needed this information and why? When did the practice begin (and, presumably, eventually end)??
Are the ads describing the people want ads or for sale ads?
It is not unheard of for long-term tickets to have a physical description of the bearer, in a matter similar to an id-card. That is to say - many modern railroad companies carry a photo of the bearer. Before photography was cheap enough, a name of the bearer would usually suffice example . In this case it is obvious, that if someone wanted to sell their ticket, then the gender of the person buying it would have to allign. Of course, this never applied to one time train tickets, but rather to monthly passes or so. The practice never ended per-se, other than by the introduction of photos.
