BUYING A WIFE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 272, 13 August 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

BUYING A WIFE

Strange World Custom: Varying Prices

What is a wife worth? Opinions vary. An Arab can buy an attractive wife for £loo—but. the .New Guinea savage rates women at "a bob a head,” says Mary Bridge. Recently a young Patbau girl was going to be married—or, rather, she was going to be sold, for her father and her future husband had come to terms. But on the wedding day two bridegrooms turned up. for the wily father hadireceived a better offer after accepting the first I A fight was the only way to settle the matter. But while the two bridegrooms fought, the distracted girl plunged into a well and drowned herself.

Even in comparatively civilised countries. wives are bought and sold. The Arabs sell their women as a matter of course, and one of the grievances among certain Arab tribes in Palestine is that the standard of living and rates of wages have risen considerably since the Jewish immigration, and this has sent up the price of wives. In the good old days, they complain, a man could get a good-looking, hard-working wife for £3O, but. now the price has risen to £lOO or d’ven £2OO.

Other races do not value wives nearly so highly. Among the primitive tribes of New Guinea they are paid for in the usual tribal shell currency, and the average rate is about one shilling. The pigmy pays for his bride, not to her father but to his future mother-in-law, and the price is one dog.

Rates in Africa vary considerably. A Kaffir might give-as mat® 1 as ten cows for a wife. In Uganda four bullocks would buy one, but in the Upper Congo districts only a few bars of iron or iron .pofs are asked. Even a box of percussion caps will sometimes induce a father to, part with his daughter! Among some' tribes in the interior of South America a mere quid of tobacco and a handful of rice will buy a good wife. Among the Tartars, brides are regularly bought and sold. While a rich man might" have to give twenty cows for a good-looking wife, a poor man could get one for a pig or a load of hay. This naturally affects the lady’s social position, for if it is known that Mr. Tartar only gave a single pig for Mrs. Tartar, she is likely to be "cut” In the best society.

The only system of marriage by purchase that ever had any pleasant feature about it was the custom in ancient Babylon. There, although brides were sold by auction in the open market and knocked down to the highest bidder, the money was pooled and distributed among the less attractive maidens who had failed to find bidders. With this little dowry as an additional asset, they would stand a better chance next auction day.

Although the Government is doing all it can to stop the practice, wives are bought and sold in many parts of China, and a rich man may pay over a thousand pounds for a beauty. The Chinaman may actually pawn his wife. He raises what he can according to her looks, and leaves her in the charge of a pawnbroker who specialises in this line of business, and who usually looks after her well enough—so well that wives sometimes refuse to come out of pawn and return to their husbands! Even in Wes tern, countries cases of such transactions come to light. A New York husband sold his pretty 'young wife for five thousand dollars, and not many years ago an Englishman sold his wife for eighteen pence and a glass of beer. And he thought he could get away with it! .