It is unclear when the ritualised custom of selling a wife by public auction began, but it seems likely to have been some time towards the end of the 17th century. In November 1692 "John, the son of Nathan Whitehouse, of Tipton, sold his wife to Mr. Bracegirdle", although the manner of the sale is unrecorded. In 1696, Thomas Heath Maultster was fined for "cohabiteing in an unlawful manner with the wife of George ffuller of Chinner ... haueing bought her of her husband at 2d.q. the pound", and ordered by the
peculiar court at
Thame to perform public penance, but between 1690 and 1750 only eight other cases were recorded in England. In an Oxford case of 1789 wife selling is described as "the vulgar form of
Divorce lately adopted", suggesting that even if it was by then established in some regions of the country, it was only slowly spreading to others. It persisted in some form until the early 20th century, although by then in "an advanced state of decomposition". In most reports the sale was announced in advance, perhaps by advertisement in a local newspaper. It usually took the form of an auction, often at a local market, to which the wife would be led by a halter (usually of rope but sometimes of ribbon) around her neck, or arm. Often the purchaser was arranged in advance, and the sale was a form of symbolic separation and remarriage, as in a case from
Maidstone, where in January 1815 John Osborne planned to sell his wife at the local market. However, as no market was held that day, the sale took place instead at "the sign of 'The Coal-barge,' in Earl Street", where "in a very regular manner", his wife and child were sold for £1 to a man named William Serjeant. In July the same year a wife was brought to Smithfield market by coach, and sold for 50
guineas and a horse. Once the sale was complete, "the lady, with her new lord and master, mounted a handsome
curricle which was in waiting for them, and drove off, seemingly nothing loath to go." At another sale in September 1815, at
Staines market, "only
three shillings and four pence were offered for the lot, no one choosing to contend with the bidder, for the fair object, whose merits could only be appreciated by those who knew them. This the purchaser could boast, from a long and intimate acquaintance." Although the initiative was usually the husband's, the wife had to agree to the sale. An 1824 report from
Manchester says that "after several biddings she [the wife] was knocked down for 5s; but not liking the purchaser, she was put up again for 3s and a quart of ale". Frequently the wife was already living with her new partner. In one case in 1804 a London shopkeeper found his wife in bed with a stranger to him, who, following an altercation, offered to purchase the wife. The shopkeeper agreed, and in this instance the sale may have been an acceptable method of resolving the situation. However, the sale was sometimes spontaneous, and the wife could find herself the subject of bids from total strangers. In March 1766, a carpenter from
Southwark sold his wife "in a fit of conjugal indifference at the alehouse". Once sober, the man asked his wife to return, and after she refused he hanged himself. A domestic fight might sometimes precede the sale of a wife, but in most recorded cases the intent was to end a marriage in a way that gave it the legitimacy of a divorce. In some cases the wife arranged for her own sale, and even provided the money for her agent to buy her out of her marriage, such as an 1822 case in
Plymouth. Such "divorces" were not always permanent. In 1826 John Turton sold his wife Mary to William Kaye at
Emley Cross for five shillings. But after Kaye's death she returned to her husband, and the couple remained together for the next 30 years.
Mid-19th century It was believed during the mid-19th century that wife selling was restricted to the lowest levels of labourers, especially to those living in remote rural areas, but an analysis of the occupations of husbands and purchasers reveals that the custom was strongest in "proto-industrial" communities. Of the 158 cases in which occupation can be established, the largest group (19) was involved in the livestock or transport trades, fourteen worked in the building trade, five were blacksmiths, four were chimney-sweeps, and two were described as gentlemen, suggesting that wife selling was not simply a peasant custom. The most high-profile case was that of
Henry Brydges, 2nd Duke of Chandos, who is reported to have bought his second wife from an
ostler in about 1740. Prices paid for wives varied considerably, from a high of £100 plus £25 each for her two children in a sale of 1865 (equivalent to about £ in ) to a low of a glass of ale, or even free. The lowest amount of money exchanged was three
farthings (three-quarters of one penny), but the usual price seems to have been between 2s. 6d. and 5
shillings. According to authors Wade Mansell and Belinda Meteyard, money seems usually to have been a secondary consideration; the more important factor was that the sale was seen by many as legally binding, despite it having no basis in law. Some of the new couples
bigamously married, but the attitude of officialdom towards wife selling was equivocal. Rural clergy and magistrates knew of the custom, but seemed uncertain of its legitimacy, or chose to turn a blind eye. Entries have been found in baptismal registers, such as this example from Perleigh in
Essex, dated 1782: "Amie Daughter of Moses Stebbing by a bought wife delivered to him in a Halter". A jury in Lincolnshire ruled in 1784 that a man who had sold his wife had no right to reclaim her from her purchaser, thus endorsing the validity of the transaction. In 1819 a magistrate who attempted to prevent a sale at Ashbourne,
Derby, but was pelted and driven away by the crowd, later commented: In some cases, such as that of Henry Cook in 1814, the
Poor Law authorities forced the husband to sell his wife rather than have to maintain her and her child in the
Effingham workhouse. She was taken to
Croydon market and sold for one shilling, the parish paying for the cost of the journey and a "wedding dinner".
Venue By choosing a market as the location for the sale, the couple ensured a large audience, which made their separation a widely witnessed fact. The use of the halter was symbolic; after the sale, it was handed to the purchaser as a signal that the transaction was concluded, and in some instances, those involved would often attempt further to legitimate the sale by forcing the winning bidder to sign a contract, recognising that the seller had no further liability for his wife. In 1735, a successful wife sale in St Clements was announced by the common cryer, who wandered the streets ensuring that local traders were aware of the former husband's intention not to honour "any debts she should contract". The same point was made in an advertisement placed in the
Ipswich Journal in 1789: "no person or persons to intrust her with my name ... for she is no longer my right". Those involved in such sales sometimes attempted to legalise the transaction, as demonstrated by a bill of sale for a wife, preserved in the
British Museum. The bill is contained in a petition presented to a
Somerset justice of the peace in 1758, by a wife who about 18 months earlier had been sold by her husband for £6 6s "for the support of his extravagancy". The petition does not object to the sale, but complains that the husband returned three months later to demand more money from his wife and her new "husband". In
Sussex,
inns and
public houses were a regular venue for wife-selling, and alcohol often formed part of the payment. For example, when a man sold his wife at the Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumber in
Yapton in 1898, the purchaser paid
7s. 6d. (£ in ) and of beer. A sale a century earlier in
Brighton involved "eight pots of beer" and seven
shillings (£ in ); and in
Ninfield in 1790, a man who swapped his wife at the village inn for half a pint of
gin changed his mind and bought her back later. Public wife sales were sometimes attended by huge crowds. An 1806 sale in
Hull was postponed "owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had gathered together", suggesting that wife sales were relatively rare events, and therefore popular. Estimates of the frequency of the ritual usually number about 300 between 1780 and 1850, relatively insignificant compared to the instances of desertion, which in the Victorian era numbered in the tens of thousands.
Distribution and symbolism , heading to
Smithfield Market to sell his wife Wife selling appears to have been widespread throughout England, but relatively rare in neighbouring Wales, where only a few cases were reported, and in Scotland where only one has been discovered. The English county with the highest number of cases between 1760 and 1880 was Yorkshire, with forty-four, considerably more than the nineteen reported for Middlesex and London during the same period, despite the French caricature of Milord
John Bull "booted and spurred, in [London's] Smithfield Market, crying
à quinze livres ma femme! [£15 for my wife], while Milady stood haltered in a pen". In his account,
Wives for Sale, author Samuel Pyeatt Menefee collected 387 incidents of wife selling, the last of which occurred in the early 20th century. Historian
E. P. Thompson considered many of Menefee's cases to be "vague and dubious", and that some double-counting had taken place, but he nevertheless agreed that about three hundred were authentic, which when combined with his own research resulted in about four hundred reported cases. Menefee argued that the ritual mirrored that of a livestock sale—the symbolic meaning of the halter; wives were even occasionally valued by weight, just like livestock. Although the halter was considered central to the "legitimacy" of the sale, Thompson has suggested that Menefee may have misunderstood the social context of the transaction. Markets were favoured not because livestock was traded there, but because they offered a public venue where the separation of husband and wife could be witnessed. Sales often took place at fairs, in front of public houses, or local landmarks such as the obelisk at
Preston (1817), or
Bolton's "gas pillar" (1835), where crowds could be expected to gather. There were very few reported sales of husbands, and from a modern perspective, selling a wife like a chattel is degrading, even when considered as a form of divorce. Nevertheless, most contemporary reports hint at the women's independence and sexual vitality: "The women are described as 'fine-looking', 'buxom', 'of good appearance', 'a comely-looking country girl', or as 'enjoying the fun and frolic heartily. Along with other English customs, settlers arriving in the American colonies during the late 17th and early 18th centuries took with them the practice of wife selling, and the belief in its legitimacy as a way of ending a marriage. In 1645 "The P'ticular Court" of
Hartford, Connecticut, reported the case of Baggett Egleston, who was fined 20 shillings for "bequething his wyfe to a young man". The
Boston Evening-Post reported on 15 March 1736 an argument between two men "and a certain woman, each one claiming her as his Wife, but so it was that one of them had actually disposed of his Right in her to the other for Fifteen Shillings". The purchaser had, apparently, refused to pay in full, and had attempted to return "his" wife. He was given the outstanding sum by two generous bystanders, and paid the husband—who promptly "gave the Woman a modest Salute wishing her well, and his Brother Sterling much Joy of his Bargain." An account in 1781 of a William Collings of South Carolina records that he sold his wife for "two dollars and half [a] dozen bowls of grogg". ==Changing attitudes==