How to get rid of your wife

DURING THE EIGHTEENTH and nineteenth centuries offering a wife for public sale was viewed as the only way of dissolving a marriage legitimately. Ordinary people could not afford divorce or legal separation, and for many women with no trade by which to maintain an independent life, a sale to another man was the only route out of an unhappy marriage. The public display of a woman’s body as a commodity for purchase rendered the procedure especially titivating to those who claimed to find it morally offensive, but it was actually intended to authenticate the separation by making it a matter of common knowledge throughout the local area.

The sale, which might be announced in advance, usually took the form of an auction at a town market. And it was no hugger-mugger affair: the venues in this article were not hidden away – the markets of Oxford, Banbury and Witney were hardly minor affairs. The wife would be led to market by a halter, usually of rope but sometimes of ribbon, around her neck or arm. As my followers know, I am wary of customs and folk tales, reliable, accredited sources being the lifeblood of the historian rather than entertaining anecdotes. I do not say that the authors of these collections are incorrect, only that I have not myself seen proper documentary evidence for such stories. So I will not repeat the old standards here; rather I present a selection of stories published in Oxfordshire newspapers, the first from 1789 at least having the merit of confirming some of the familiar features.

“About noon on Wednesday last, the vulgar mode of divorce lately adopted was put in practice here in our new market place [in Oxford] before a multitude of witnesses. Richard Hawkins, one of our canal navigation men, made a publick sale of his wife to William Gibbs, a mason employed in the works at the castle. After a conversation about the payment of five shillings as the purchase money, the old husband pulled out a penny slip knot and tied [it] round round the waist of his wife, the end of which he held fast till he had pocketed three shillings in part [payment], the purchaser not abounding in cash. He then put the cord into the hands of the new husband and took French leave.¹ The woman immediately called for her second wedding ring, which being put on she eagerly kissed the fellow, with whom she walked off, leaving the spectators in amazement at such uncommon assurance.’” ²

Evidently the purchaser’s fortune was not the attraction. But was this partnership any more successful than the wife’s first? Tracing the outcome of such a sale is problematic; the wife may or may not have changed her name, and her new partner may or may not have been from a different village. And some newspapers were more fastidious than others in avoiding the use of genuine names when reporting on such delicate issues.

No young fawn quivering with mortification here; it may be that the buyer was already co-habiting with the lady, and the sale was a form of symbolic separation and remarriage. Records of eighteenth-century women resisting the transaction are non-existent. Neither is there any hint of an actual bidding process, suggesting that everyone present knew exactly what was going on. Such proceedings doubtless involved a degree of ribaldry distasteful to the social superiors of the gathered throng. After all, the lower orders were helping themselves without charge to something the upper classes must pay dearly for, and that the middle classes could not access because of their crippling sense of propriety.

The main concern of separating husbands appears to have been to emphasise that they no longer considered themselves responsible for their absent wife’s debts. When Elizabeth Hedges of Wolvercote bolted from the marital home in 1772, making sure to take as a nest-egg a haul of goods including a large quantity of bacon, there was no question of embarrassment or discretion on her husband’s part. William Hedges announced boldly in the Oxford Journal that he would “not be answerable for any debts she may hereafter contract”.³ The Hedges had been married for only eleven months; one wonders what on earth went wrong.⁴

Wife sales were guaranteed to draw in the curious. In November 1831, the crowd in Banbury ran into the thousands:

“About two o’clock on our market day (Thursday) thousands of persons were hastily collected in Parson’s Lane, Market Place, Corn Hill, and parts adjacent, to witness one of those disgraceful scenes: a man selling his wife! The happy couple came from a neighbouring village, and a fortunate purchaser was found to the amount of ten shillings. This is the first offence of the kind against common decency we remember to have taken place in Banbury.”⁵

For a crowd of thousands to attend, word must have raced round somehow. Had the public crier given notice at the previous week’s market? Certainly this is how the news was spread in Witney in 1839.

“SALE OF A WIFE! – Our market today was the scene of one of those disgraceful occurrences (happily not a frequent occurrence): the sale of a wife. The parties, we understand, were all from Oxford, and the public crier having given notice of what was to take place, the novelty of the thing attracted a vast concourse of persons to the spot. About one o’clock the woman was led with a halter about her neck round the market place three several times by her husband, followed by hundreds of people, the woman waving a blue handkerchief and altogether exhibiting a most barefaced and disgusting effrontery, after which the lot was put up and knocked down to a man, evidently an acquaintance, for the sum of ten pounds – a larger sum considerably than is generally obtained for such merchandise. The woman is understood to have given the purchase money which was handed over to the seller, and a stamp receipt given for the same. The parties then walked off together equally pleased.”⁶

In August 1845, a large crowd of people gathered in Banbury market place to see a Neithrop man named Hemings offer his wife for sale. A purchaser was ready and waiting, we are told, in the form of the man with whom she had been living for some time, but the presence of the police prevented the sale going ahead. Generally any police presence was to guard against rowdy behaviour rather than stopping a sale. Carrying out the transaction by means of a deed of conveyance was by this time gaining in popularity, so the following morning the determined Hemings went to a solicitor for advice. Directly he made his purpose known, however, the solicitor “desired him to go to a place supposed to be much further off than the market place”.⁷  

If the husband in question was 45-year-old gardener William Hemings of Neithrop, and if the newspaper used genuine names, he certainly went somewhere – very likely on a bender – because he was gaoled for fourteen days on 15 September for deserting his wife and family.⁸ Evidently domestic calm was restored to a degree because he was back in Neithrop living with his wife Sarah and family in 1851.⁹ But only the man himself could tell us whether he was in heaven or hell.

Until the Marriage Act of 1753, personal consent was far more important to legitimate a marriage than the location where it was conducted or by whom. Naturally where the conveyance of mighty estates and fortunes were at stake, the elite wanted to show from day one that they had adhered to any new protocols. But the attitude of the humbler sort without such concerns about inheritance and legitimacy did not change overnight. And although the Matrimonial Causes Act of of 1857 made divorce more accessible to those who could afford it, reports of wife selling continued for decades after.

As widespread literacy took hold and the signature took over from the mark of a cross as a guarantee of authenticity, the usefulness of correct paperwork in the form of certificates became clear and public proclamation was not enough. The case of an English wife sale in 1913 is often quoted as the last-known instance, when a Leeds woman claimed that her husband had sold her to one of his workmates for one pound. But wife selling was never actually abolished because it had never been legal in the first place.

1  Leaving without asking permission.

2  Jackson's Oxford Journal, 12 December 1789

3  Oxford Journal, 19 September 1772

4  Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1812, Anglican Parish Registers; Reference Number: PAR295/1/R3/1, 23 Oct 1771, William Hedges m. Elizabeth West

5  Oxford Journal, 03 December 1831

6  Oxford Journal, 04 May 1839

7  Banbury Guardian, 28 August 1845

8  UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; PCOM 2: Metropolitan Police: Criminal Record Office: Habitual Criminals Registers and Miscellaneous Papers, 1849-1850, William Hemmings

9  1851 England Census, Class: HO107; Piece: 1734; Folio: 531; Page: 29; GSU roll: 193644, Banbury