In Civilized England it is Uncivilized to Sell Wives

England is one of the five superpowers in the world today. They are one of the most civilized nations in the world. The English, who at one time ruled almost the whole world by making great strides in science, had at one time introduced the barbaric practice of selling wives in their country. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, various cases of wife trafficking were reported in various newspapers published in England between 1780 and 1850. The first incident of sale of wife took place in 1733. The recorded example comes from a small village called Ballston, close to Wolverhampton and Birmingham. A man named Samuel Whitehouse sold his wife, Mary Whitehouse, to Thomas Griffith for a pound.

Samuel Whitehouse practised this strange selling of wives in England until the 20th century. According to lawyer and historian James Bryce, there was also an article in 1901 about the sale of a wife. As one of the latest reports of wife sales in England, in 1913, a woman in Leeds (West Yorkshire) police court claimed that her husband had sold her to a coworker for dollar 1.

However, according to James Bryce, ‘wife sale’ was not customary law. In the case of a husband and wife who had a bad relationship or had a love affair with his wife, the husband would sell her if he could not divorce her. As a result, this practice became popular among the poor as a remedy for divorce. At first, the law enforcement authorities did not pay much attention. As a result, the practice became more popular. But at some point, the court intervened, and the court gradually shut it down, and the law was introduced to send those involved to jail. 

Before 1857, it was a difficult and expensive task to divorce a wife in England. Divorce was legal and cost about $300, now about 15,000 dollars. To save this huge amount of money, many ordinary Englishmen introduced selling wives without direct divorce. In the poorer parts of England, women were treated more like property for sale.

Husbands who were unwilling to keep their wives would take them to the market and start calling for auctions. In many cases, they also announced the sale of wives in the newspapers. It is known that many women would agree to be sold at their own will to alleviate the unrest in their married life. There was no alternative to ending a low-cost married life. Although the practice was illegal, the authorities did not pay much attention to it.

The practice continued to grow in the 1820s and 1830s. As a result, there is a natural reaction in society. Then in 1855, a man named Cotswold sold his newly married wife for 25,000 dollars. Although at that time, people did not consider the practice of selling wives as respectable. Even then, Cotswold sold his new wife to the buyer for three nights. The buyer allegedly had sex with the new bride, which was a punishable offence at the time. As a result, the husband set fire to a pile of food grains outside the buyer’s house on the third night. In the end, the buyer returned the new bride to her husband in exchange for money. 

Finally, in 1857, the law of divorce was relaxed in England. However, the sale of wives did not stop at once. Now among the English, the issue of divorce or divorce has also come down. As a result, the practice of selling wives has also disappeared.