The Victorian Era ~ Wife Selling

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(Yes, there was no error. Wife selling.) Divorce was looked down upon in Victorian England. When couples were married it was for life. It was a time of traditional values and the belief that women were property. Divorce was expensive and something only a private act of Parliament could make happen. So the poor working classes would either advertise in the paper or take their wife to the marketplace to be sold. The price was whatever they could get, sometimes this included animals. They would actually bring their wive out into the marketplace with a halter around the neck and waste. Much like the selling of cattle, the woman was paraded around the square and, sometimes, even children were a part of the deal. The first recorded sale of a wife was in 1692 and the last was in 1913. Popularity grew in the mid-1800s and in Samuel Pyet Menafee's "Wives for Sale" he wrote that there were probably about 400 such sales during the period of about two hundred years. We've come a long way, haven't we? Picture is from my collection.