A few weeks ago we brought you the first of an occasional series of articles about wife-selling from the volumes of the Stamford Mercury. Here are two further tales.
“At Billingboro’ last week occurred, amongst other improving subjects of conversation in that fashionable village, one of those connubial transfers which are said (untruly) not to be uncommon in London–the sale of a wife! In the metropolis, the stock so to be put up, it is added, is drawn to Smithfield with a halter round her neck. There was no recommendation of a good halter, we understand, in the lot at Billingboro’, but still, from the assemblage of a large company in the public street, the lady fetched one pound one [shilling] to her husband, who immediately delivered her to the buyer; and she has since been constantly and openly living with the man to whom she was so transferred. All this has occurred (to use the language of the city declaimers) “in the nineteenth century !”–It is recommended to us to accompany the notice of so flagrant a transaction with the censure which the outrage on public decorum requires; and we are sorry to learn that there are some people so extremely ignorant as to believe that a sale of this kind will dissolve the marriage contract, and leave the man or the wife at liberty to enter into a new matrimonial connection ! An application on the subject was actually made in this case to a neighbouring magistrate, who assured the parties of the total groundlessness of their notion, and that the husband was for life bound to support the wife and all the children that she had or might have; his ridiculous proceeding of selling his wife, as it was called, was one, therefore, that relieved him from no obligation, but added to his former burthens the disgrace and infamy of a connivance at his wife’s prostitution !”
Stamford Mercury, 30 August 1816.
“The wife of Henry Frost, weaver, of Hull, some time since sold to one William Whiting, for the small sum of one shilling and sixpence, has returned to her husband, the purchaser having given him two guineas to take her back ! !”
Stamford Mercury, 22nd June 1821.