Wife Selling. The perils of being a nagging wife.

 

I first heard of the practice of "wife selling" when I read the Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. I didn't think it was historically accurate but it seems that it was. In Hardy's novel, Micheal Henchard, sells his wife Susan and baby daughter to a sailor at a county fair.

At Carlisle on 7th April 1832, a farmer called Joseph Thompson, sold his wife to a pensioner called Henry Mears for 20 shillings and a Newfoundland dog. According to the Lancaster Herald, Thompson's wife was about 22 years of age and "appeared to feel a pleasure at the exchange she was about to make." The Herald noted that "She appeared above the crowd, standing on a large oak chair, surrounded by many of her friends, with a rope or halter made of straw round her neck." Thompson told the crowd that his wife could "make butter and scold the maid, she can sing Moore's melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin or whiskey, but is a good judge of the quality from long experience of testing them."

Although the practice of wife selling was rare and of questionable legality, Thompson seems to have put his wife up for sale because she nagged him too much.

Henchard, a farm labourer, sold his wife and daughter in a fit of drunkenness and regrets doing so when he sobers up. He gives up drinking, becomes a prosperous corn merchant, and the Mayor of Casterbridge. After a period of twenty years, his wife returns with their daughter and Henchard remarries her. He later discovers that his daughter, Elizabeth Jane, is the child of the sailor to whom he sold his wife. There's always a twist in a good story.