#there's this whole interesting phenomenon whereby (usually white) women of a certain age and/or who weren't conventionally attractive

[marzipanandminutiae]

I tried to find out who this person (a man, probably, but the ad doesn't specify, and women COULD own businesses!) was

there was a prominent banker named Washington Hadley in Whittier, CA, but that doesn't start with an M, died before telephones were invented, and anyway he doesn't seem likely to be announcing his release from jail with a Sugar Flash Sale

the Hadley family remained influential in the area, though. so this could be the child of a Fine Upstanding Family who's gotten out of the lockup and is now hawking sugar within a very specific timeframe

~ The Whittier News, December 5, 1903

Mr. M. R. Hadley is out of jail and will sell 18 pounds of sugar to any child capable of carrying it. Otherwise he will deliver in seventeen minutes. Not fifteen or twenty. Seventeen.