A brief history of when men sold their wives at market, and why some women enthusiastically consented to it Centuries before legal divorce was accessible, selling your partner to someone else allowed working class couples to be publicly separate

According to the Office for National Statistics, divorce rates for opposite-sex couples in England and Wales are at their lowest level since 1973. While this may seem like cause for celebration, it still means 42 per cent of all UK marriages can expect to end in divorce.

Divorce rates are rarely looked on as a good thing. They tend to be employed to demonstrate the decay of the nuclear family, a fractured society, the plight of the single parent and so forth. But I, for one, am glad so many people who found themselves in a relationship that wasn’t working were able to leave because it has not always been so straight forward.

‘The options available were to grin and bear it, try and get an annulment (tricky), desertion, bigamy, or to tie a rope around their neck and sell them at market to the highest bidder’ i's opinion newsletter: talking points from today Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Divorce as we know it was not permitted until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act which allowed a husband to divorce his wife on grounds of adultery, and for a wife to divorce her husband if he had committed aggravated adultery – meaning as well as playing away, he was guilty of cruelty, incest, bigamy, desertion, or possibly all of the above. Before 1857, things were even more complicated and if you wanted a divorce, you had to obtain a private Act of Parliament to do so.

All of this was prohibitively expensive, horrendously public, and simply not something your average Joe Bloggs could access. So, what was an unhappy working class couple to do if they no longer wanted to be with one another? The options available were to grin and bear it, try and get an annulment (tricky), desertion, bigamy, or to tie a rope around their neck and sell them at market to the highest bidder.

In the centuries before legal divorce was accessible, selling your partner to someone else allowed working class couples to be publicly separated. The practice dates back to at least the early sixteenth century, although some historians believe it to be Anglo-Saxon in origin. Far from this being a handful of isolated incidents, there were at least 108 documented cases from 1837 to 1901 – and there will almost certainly have been many more such undocumented cases. Wife selling happened across the country, but Yorkshire seemed to have been particularly keen on the tradition and accounted for almost a quarter of all documented cases.

To auction off his wife, a husband would lead her to a public meeting place, such as a marketplace or a tavern, usually with a halter around her neck to resemble livestock. Sometimes ribbons were used to symbolise ropes and harnesses, but not always. The sale would have been advertised beforehand to drum up interest and occasionally an auctioneer would oversee the event. Some sales would have been a more private affair that took place down the pub, but it was important there were witnesses.

Flogging your wife at a cattle market may seem grotesquely abusive, but the vast majority of these sales were carried out with the full and enthusiastic consent of the wife. E. P. Thompson researched wife sales from 1760 to 1880 and found only four had occurred against the wife’s wishes. This makes sense when you consider a sale was regarded as legally binding and the wife may have wanted out every bit as much as her husband.

Unfaithful wives sold to their lovers

If the wife had been unfaithful, more often than not, she would be sold to her lover, although in several cases, a wife was bought by a family member just to make sure the marriage could end. One wife who was auctioned in Plymouth in 1822 was so desperate to be free from her husband she actually bought herself for £3 when her lover failed to show up to bid for her.

‘In several cases, a wife was bought by a family member, just to make sure the marriage could end’

Adultery was not the only reason a marriage might be dissolved like this. What we now call ‘irreconcilable differences’ also motivated spouse sales. In 1796, for example, Jane Hebband was sold by her husband for five shillings because “she was too much for him”. Mr Hebband published the following advertisement for his wife: “To be sold for 5s my wife, Jane Hebband. She is stoutly built and is sound, wind and limb. She can sow and reap, hold plough, and drive a team and would answer any stout able man that can hold a tight rein, for she is damned hard-mouthed and headstrong: but if properly managed, would either lead or drive as tame a rabbit.”

The price of a wife varied considerably, from several hundred pounds to a few pence and a jar of gin. In an 1862 sale in Selby, one man sold his wife for a pint of beer. On 7 April 1832, Joseph Thomson sold his wife Mary at Carlisle market for 20 shillings and a Newfoundland dog. A large crowd had gathered to witness this sale and Joseph’s address to the bidders was recorded in the local press. He said: “Gentlemen, I offer to your notice my wife, Mary Anne Thomson, otherwise Williams, whom I mean to sell to the highest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine to part forever. She has been to me only a born serpent. I took her for my comfort, but she became my tormentor; a domestic curse, a night invasion, and daily devil. Gentlemen, I speak truth from my heart when I say—May God deliver us from troublesome wives and frolicsome women. I will introduce the bright and sunny side of her…She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty… She can make butter and scold the maid…[and] make rum, gin, or whiskey…I therefore offer her…for the sum of fifty shillings.”

The wife who sold her husband

But men didn’t get it all their own way. Historian Lauren Padgett has been researching the history of spouse sales and found a handful of instances where a wife sold her husband. In 1839 in Tyrone, Ireland, Henry Mullen was charged with bigamy when it transpired his second wife had purchased him from his first wife for £3, “thinking [him] very cheap at that”. Another case arose in Birmingham in 1853, where William Charles Capas had been ‘leased’ from his first wife to Emily Hickson. Capas and Hickson had drawn up a contract and agreed to “live and reside together, and to mutually assist in supporting and maintaining each other during the remainder of their lives”.

‘The last known case in Britain was in 1926 when Horace Clayton of Leeds was charged with deserting his wife and two children’

Before you attempt to sell your loved ones on eBay, selling your spouse is not now and never has been legal, and those who did so were committing bigamy. Despite the courts cracking down on the practice, spouse sales did not start to decline until the mid-nineteenth century when legal divorce became more accessible. However, the tradition survived into the twentieth century. In 1926, Horace Clayton of Leeds was charged with deserting his wife and two children. When the courts finally tracked him down, Horace had been living in Hull with another woman he had allegedly bought from her husband for £10.

The practice may have died out in Britain, but isolated incidents around Europe continued. In November 1934, a Polish woman complained to the courts the man who had purchased her from her husband for £11 was treating her poorly and repeatedly told her he had paid more than she was worth. As late as 1950, a case was brought before Neapolitan magistrates when Vincenzo Marvasi sold his wife to his friend for 40,000 lire, but refused to take her back or refund the money when his friend changed his mind a few days later.

Being taken to auction with a halter around your neck must have been painfully humiliating, but there was no legal recourse available for a woman to leave her husband until 1857 – and even then it was very difficult.

Jennifer Weiner once wrote: “Divorce isn’t such a tragedy. A tragedy’s staying in an unhappy marriage.” It is easy to look at the tradition of spouse selling as a tragedy, but it allowed couples to separate and move on with their lives. The real tragedy is that it has taken so long for divorce to be accessible to everyone.