A WIFE FOR SALE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3400, 30 July 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

A WIFE FOR SALE

LOOKING BACK ON ENGLISH HISTORY. Were wives ever openly sold in England and other European countries in the nineteenth century ? They were; and letters now appearing in the London Times prove it. Lord Farrer recently cited the following cases from “ Recollections of Henry Burston,” published in 1911: “ Although the July business Fair was a sheep fair, and the November Fair a colt fair, occasionally animals of a quite different kind were sold at them. I have been told of a woman named Smart who, about 1820, was sold at Horsham by her husband for 3s 6d. She was bought by a man named Steere, and lived with him at Billingshurst. She had two eh ldren by each of these husbands. Steere afterwards discovered that Smart had parted with her because she had qualities that he could endure no longer, and Steere, discovering the same qualities himself, sold her to a man named Greenfield, who endured, or never discovered, or differently valued, the said qualit : es till he died. “ Again, at the November Fair, 1825, a journeyman blacksmith, whose name I never heard, with the greatest effrontery exhibited for sa’e his wife with a halter round her neck. She was a good-looking woman, with three children, and was actually sold for £2 ss, the purchaser agreeing to take one of the chTdren. This deal gave offence to some who were present, and they reported the case to a magistrate, but the contracting parties, presumably satisfied, quickly disappeared, and I never heard any more about them. “ The last case happened about 1844, when Ann Holland, known as ‘ Pintoe Nanny,’ was sold for £1 10s. She was led into the market place with a halter round her neck; many people hissed and booed, but the majority took the matter good-hmouredly, and

she was knocked down to a man named Johnson, at Shipley, who sold his watch to buy her for the above sum. The barga'n was celebrated on the spot by the consumption of a lot of beer by Nanny, her new husband, and friends. She lived with Johnson for one year, during which she had one child; then ran away; finally marry- - ing a man named Jim Smith, with ' whom she lived apparently happy for many years.” “ I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these statements,” says Lord Farrer, “ but have no reason to doubt them.” Readers will be interested in another Times correspondent on this subject, Aline M. Rees, who shows that across the Channel wives were sold. She writes: “The custom of holding ‘ a wife for sale ’ was not confined to Eng 1 and, and certainly obtained in France, as is proved by a rhyme which bears the mark of the eighteenth century, and which I have heard and sung myself in my native province of Poltu. “ Feminists indeed were right in contending that, in law, a wife was no more than goods and chattels; but how she could make up for her lost freedom by her viciousness is the eternal theme of tableaux and folk songs down to contemporary days.”