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  1. #1
    cotswold mike
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    Default Divorce by sale of wife at market

    I understand that "Divorce by Sale" (as described by Hardy in 'The Mayor of Casterbridge') was a form of 'common law' divorce widely used for those who could not afford anything else. Is there any way of knowing how widespread was this practice and when did divorce become cheap enough to be affordable by your average 'ag. lab.' ?

  2. #2
    Brick wall demolition expert!
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    I certainly can't say how widespread this practice was but I imagine this would be a fascinating subject to research and I shall certainly be interested in learning more. I remember on a different thread coming across the following newspaper snippet, transcribed by the Lincolnshire FHS...

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    22nd June 1821

    "The wife of Henry FROST, weaver, some time since sold to one William WHITING for the small sum of one shilling and sixpence (7½p), has returned to her husband, the purchaser having given him two guineas (£2.10), to take her back."

    www.
    lincolnshirefhs.org.uk/NewspaperExtracts/1820Listing.htm

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    I don't know if there are any more examples like this in the Lincolnshire newspapers above but you could have a look through. Be warned, the extracts make addictive reading. This wiki article on the subject may also be of some interest to you...

    https://
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_%28English_custom%29

  3. #3
    Coromandel
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    Parts of Lawrence Stone's Road to divorce: England 1530-1987 can be found on Google Books. Chapter VI is entitled 'Desertion, elopement and wife-sale'. Some pages aren't online, but plenty about wife-sales can be seen.

    Stone says 'We can be reasonably confident that fewer than three hundred cases of wife-sale occurred in all England during the peak seventy years from 1780 to 1850. Thus wife-sales pale to insignificance compared with the thousands of unreported desertions and elopements which must have been taking place during this period.'

    To follow on from the newspaper report found by olliecat, here's one from an 1833 Bristol newspaper:

    www.
    bristolfamilyhistory.co.uk/wife-bath-sale-%E2%80%93-louisa-stradling

    concerning James Stradling of Bath -- who, after a failed attempt to sell his wife, went to more extreme lengths to get rid of her.

  4. #4
    Name well known on Brit-Gen
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    In her book My Ancestor was a Bastard, Ruth Paley says ...

    "The objective [of wife sales] was to obtain public recognition of the dissolution of one relationship and the start of another ... a ritual handing over of legal and financial obligations from one husband to another in return for what was usually a token sum of money. They are frequently recorded as having taken place in the cattle market on market day, but sales by written contract are also known. Unlike Thomas Hardy's fictional account in the Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) they did not result from decisions made on the whim of the moment, nor were the wives sold to strangers; they simply publicised a pre-arranged agreement between the three parties: the husband, the wife and her lover. ..."

    She also gives some figures on divorce -- in 1858, 4 per year; 1861, 150 per year; 1914, over 800 per year (equates to less than one in a thousand married couples).

    Divorce became more common after 1918, but it didn't really take off for the masses until the introduction of legal aid in 1949.

  5. #5
    Colin Moretti
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    One of the paupers who appeared before the Parliamentary enquiry into the Andover (Hants) workhouse scandal (1845), Hannah Joyce, claimed in evidence to have been married three times and had had a number of children, most of whom had died, and that she had once been sold at Weyhill fair, just outside Andover.

    Has divorce ever been affordable for an Ag Lab? Even today it doesn't come cheap. The poor usually either just lived with a new partner or committed bigamy - often referred to as the poor man's (or woman's) divorce.

    Have you read the TNA research guide on the subject?
    Although [after 1858] divorce was no longer the exclusive province of the very wealthy, it still involved considerable expense, so the poor were effectively excluded. The very poor could sue without payment of fees ‘in forma pauperis’ if they could prove their lack of means. The real opening of divorce to all classes did not take place until the 1920s, with the extension of legal aid, and the provision of some local facilities.
    Colin

  6. #6
    Knowledgeable and helpful
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    Wife sale was not officially recognised as a divorce and any re-marriage of either party was bigamous.
    Cheers
    Guy
    As we have gained from the past, we owe the future a debt, which we pay by sharing today.

  7. #7
    cotswold mike
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kerrywood View Post
    In her book My Ancestor was a Bastard, Ruth Paley says ...

    "The objective [of wife sales] was to obtain public recognition of the dissolution of one relationship and the start of another ... a ritual handing over of legal and financial obligations from one husband to another in return for what was usually a token sum of money. They are frequently recorded as having taken place in the cattle market on market day ...
    There is a framed Bill of Sale in a pub in Shropshire and the explanatory material displayed with it accords exactly with that view and implies that there were benefits to all three. A divorce is a break in the fabric of society and the cracks need to be repaired or, at least, papered over – and preferably in an amicable manner. A cuckold has been seen to be compensated and a cuckolder has been seen to do the honourable thing. It is difficult to imagine that the wife would be a mere passive object in the affair and furthermore it resolves questions concerning any personal property that she took into the original marital home and now wishes to re-claim for her new home.

  8. #8
    exiled brummie
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    There are a number of such "wife sales" recorded in Aris's Birmingham newspaper in the late 1700'. Some of the articles stress that the practice was illegal and express some surprise that the authorities appeared to turn a blind eye, particularly as some of the sales were advertised on bill boards etc in advance.

  9. #9
    AnnB
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    From the North Devon Journal of the 3rd April 1834

    A man called Christopher Lock, a stone mason, late of Marwood, but now residing in Braunton, between whom and his wife much unhappiness has for a long time prevailed, came to the market with the professed intention of selling her. The brutalizing conduct of the husband was met with corresponding impropriety in the wife, who it is reported has formed an illicit connection with another man, a tangible proof of which has been produced. An understanding sustained between the parties relative to the proposed transaction, and the wife with her partner were in attendance at the same public house with the husband, and a crowd of persons curious to witness the proposed transfer; when a constable put an end to the drama, by taking the husband before the mayor, who ordered him to be put in the constables’ prison till the next morning; and conducting the wife to the extremity of the parish, sent her about her business.

    Best wishes
    Ann

  10. #10
    DorothySandra
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    To sell a wife in this way was a disgraceful thing to do: that's Hardy's point. The man regretted it so much that he gave up drinking and gambling, as I remember it, and became a model citizen. It was in no way approved of even by the other drunken men in the story - and the man who bought the wife did so in the spirit of one rescuing a woman from an unbearable situation.

    Demanding compensation from a wife's lover was not quite the same thing: it was a way of making life difficult for the wife and her new man. An act of malice with the gloss of Righteous Indignation.

    We have to make a distinction between what was done from necessity, and what was considered respectable. People might move to a new district - as Hardy's people do - to establish a new reputation in a new life. The man gives up drinking and becomes a model citizen in Casterbridge, the woman and her new man in the US or Canada.

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