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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: LBobble on Tuesday 05 February 08 18:06 GMT (UK)
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Verrry interesting (Ladies beware)
http://www.generalist.org.uk/docs/wifesell.html
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The sale of wives in the British Isles, whilst illegal was not uncommon in the 18th., 19th., and even into the 20th. centuries. This practice was one, yet invalid, route to divorce.
Samuel Pyeatt MENEFEE, Wives for Sale: an Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce Oxford 1984 ISBN: 0631133011
Wife sales were often conducted on market days and the sale recorded in the auctioneer's accounts, occasionally parish officers acted as auctioneers. The arrangements seem to have been quite amicable and when national news was thin were reported in the London newspapers as well as the local ones. Very occasionally references to wife sales can be found in parish registers.
"Marriage Laws, Rites, Records and Customs" Colin R. Chapman. ISBN 1873686021
Also see "The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/casterbridge/shortsumm.html
Apparently there was a case in Leeds in 1926 and Blackwood (Mon) in 1928. "English Folklore" by A.R. Wright
Stan
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Thought this might be fit for here:
A WIFE PURCHASED. - On Wednesday last week, a couple appeared before the superintendent registrar at Bodmin, Mr. Elias H. LIDDELL, to be married, their banns having been previously called before the Board of Guardians. The registrar having heard that one of the parties was already married, considered it his duty to caution them, and told them if that were the case they were rendering themselves by a second marriage liable to transportation. The man then produced a certificate from another man, who was the husband of the woman before the registrar, stating that he (the man who now appeared to be married) had purchased his wife of him for £1; but of course the registrar could not regard this document as conferring legality on such a proceeding, and he therefore refused to marry the parties, who went away apparently much disappointed. The husband who had sold his wife was one of St. Germans, and the man that purchased her is a navvy living in the neighbourhood of Bodmin.