Its common for children to want to sell or give away their siblings, but have you ever heard of a spouse wanting to do the same thing? In the Victorian Era, it wasn’t uncommon for a man to put a collar around his wife’s neck or a ribbon around her wrist and lead her to the market to sell her. The prices varied from sale to sale, sometimes being a small amount of alcohol and other times being some amount of cash. Between 1780 and 1850, about 300 wives were sold, and in 1857 a divorce law was ratified, which slowed down but didn’t end wife sales.

This seems especially horrible now, but in that time period divorce was extremely expensive–nearly $20,000 modern dollars–and required the consent of the Church of Enfland. Due to this, and the prenuptials that were often drawn up, many did not want to get divorced. Women were lacking in rights in this time period, so naturally the next logical step when you couldn’t get divorced was to sell off the spouse. The wives usually did have some form of choice in this though. Most were sold with their consent and were able to veto someone if they did not wish to go with the would-be buyer.

This practice was technically illegal, but authorities typically turned a blind eye to the situation. Often times, the sale was purely symbolic, with only one man bidding on the sale. This was due to the fact that this was predetermined buyer, the wife’s lover, or both.

In 1876, a man by the name of Clayton professed his love for a women by the name of Mrs. Wells to her husband and asked for her hand. Mr. Wells gave Clayton his permission, as Mrs. Wells had already been living with Clayton for several years at that point and Wells no longer cared what she did. Clayton also adopted the Wells’ daughter due to Mrs. Wells attachment to the child. Clayton paid Mr. Wells 5 pints of beer total, 4 of them for Mrs. Wells and 1 of them for her daughter after insisting that he did not want Mrs. Wells “so cheaply” as to have her for free.

This wasn’t the only sale that included children, however. In 1832, a man named Walter sold his wife in return for an eight year old boy, a glass of gin and a pint of beer. In 1815, John Osbourne sold his wife and child at the market for £1. In that time period, that was quite a bit of money, nearly one hundred modern dollars.

Typically, money wasn’t what wife selling was about though. Most wives were sold to get out of an unhappy marriage, and wife selling was believed to be a legal way to get out of divorce and to cut ties with your spouse, despite the actual illegality of it all. Due to the fact that money wasn’t as important as the sale itself, price ranges varied widely. Among some of the more outrageous sales was one wife in return for a horse and 50 guineas (a type of currency), and in a different case, a wife was sold in return for 20 shillings and a newfoundland dog.

Because this was not seen as legal, however, if a husbands who sold his wife died, the woman could come back and claim to be his widower, and it was likely that the courts would vote in her favor and give her her ex-husband’s belongings.

Although many wives were sold, that’s not to say that this was a common practice, because it was not. The elites of society and other countries found wife selling to be a depraved act, while the lower classes seemed to find some form of amusement and/or disgust in wife selling.

Although wife selling was still happening in the late 1800s, because of the divorce law made in 1857 and the slowly decreasing prices, by the time the 1900s rolled around, the practice was nearly completely abandoned, just an odd piece of history. The last recorded instance of a wife being sold was in 1913, where she told the police that her husband had sold her to one of his colleagues for £1.

The practice may have been amusing in hindsight, but it’s probably a relief to many that wife selling has been abandoned.

More Info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/11/20/the-strange-english-custom-of-wife-selling/
https://www.madelinehunter.com/extras/history/tt_sellingwife.php
https://www.history.com/news/england-divorce-18th-century-wife-auction
http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/blogs/leeds-centre-for-victorian-studies/19th-century-wife-selling-in-literature-illustrations-and-practice
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wife-selling-england-beer
Eric W. Nye, Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Conversion of Currency, accessed Thursday, May 09, 2019, http://www.uwyo.edu/numimage/currency.htm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom)
http://thegentlemanangler.com/historic-tales/wife-sold-for-20-shillings-and-a-newfoundland-dog-1832/1299/