WIFE SALES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2478, 14 August 1903, Page 6

WIFE SALES.

There are instances in which country people have gone befoie a local solicitor, and have had a contract of sale drawn op for the disposal of their wives (says Mr. Baring Gould in the " Queen "). The Birmingham Police-court in 1863 bad to adjudicate on such a case, and the astounding thing in this iostance was that a lawyer could be found to draw up the contract It is no wonder that the magistrates administered a very severe reprimand. But there was a far earlier case than this, that of Sir William de Paganel; the lady stoutly and indignantly resisted the transfer, and appealed against the contract to the law, which declared the sale to be null and void In 1815 a man held a regular auction in the market-place at Pontefract, offering his wife at a minimum bidding of Is., but he managed to excite a competition, and she was finally knocked down for lis. In 1820 a man namrd Brouchet led his wife, a pleasant-looking woman, but with a tongue in her mouth, into the cattle mai ket at Canterbury from the neighbouring village of Broughton. Ue required a salesman to dispose of her, but the salesman replied that his dealings were with cattle only, and not with women. Brouchet, not to be beaten, thereupon hired a cattlepen, paying 6d. for the hire, and led his wife into it by the halter that was round her neck. She did net fetch a high figure, being disposed of to a young man at Canterbury for ss. In 1832, on Apiil 7, a farmer named Joseph Thompson came into Carlisle with his wife, to whom he had been mariied three years before; he sent the bellman round the town to announce a sale, and this attracted a great crowd. At noon the sale took place. Thompson placed his wife on a chair, with a rope of straw round her neck. lie then said—according to the report in the " Annual Register "—" Gentlemen, I have to offer to your notice my wife, Mary Anne Thompson, otherwise Williams, whom I mean to sell to the highest and fairest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish, as well as mine, to part for ever. She has been to me only a born serpent. I took her for my comfort and the good of my home; but she became my tormentor—a domestic curse. Gentlemen, I speak the truth from my heart when I saymay God deliver os from troublesome wives and frolicsome women! Avoid them as you would a mad dog or a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera morbus, Mount Etna, or any other pestilential thing in nature. Now I have shown you the dark side of my wife, and told you her faults and failings, I will introduce the bright and sunny side of her, and explain her qualifications and goodness. She can read novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same ease ' that you could take a glass of ale when thirsty. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet Bay* of women in general:— Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace To laugh, to weep; to cheat the human race. She can make butter aod scold the maid; she can sing Moore's melodies, and plait her frills and caps; she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky, bat she is a good judge of the quality from long experience in tasting them. I therefore offer her with all her perfections aod imperfections for the sum of fifty shillings." That this sermon was spoken by Thomson is most improbable; it is, doubtless, put into his mouth by the editor of the " Annual Register "; it was not to his interest to depreciate the article he desired to sell. After about an hour the woman was knocked down to one Henry Mean, for 20s. and a New - foundland dog. They then parted company in oerfect good humour—each satisfied with his bargain; Mean and the woman went one way, and Thomson and the dog another. In 1835 a man led his wife Dy a baiter, in precisely the same way, into the market at Birmingham, and sold her for £ls. She at once went home with the purchaser. She survived both buyer and seller, and then married again. Some property came to ber in the course of yean from her first husband, for, notwithstanding claims pot forth by his relatives, she was able to maintain in a court of law that the sale did not and could not vitiate her rights as his widow. In 1858, in a tavern at Little Hoiton, Bradford, a man named Hartley Thompson put up his wife, who is described by the local journals as a pretty young woman,for sale by auction, and bo had the sale previously announced by sending round the bellman. He led her into tbs market with a ribbon round her neck, which exhibits an advance in refinement over the straw halter; and, again in 1859, a man at Dudley disposed of his wife in a somewhat similar manner for sixpence. A feature in all these instances was the docility with which the win submitted to be haltered and sold.