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Speaker 1: Yeah. I've often thought that every single romantic relationship is

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Speaker 1: like a country all its own, with its own unique rules,

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Speaker 1: its own unique social morays, and so on, and everybody

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Speaker 1: else is, to some degree or another, an outsider. But

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Speaker 1: whenever we talk about relationships in general, we run into

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Speaker 1: some strange, complicated and ridiculous things. Hi, I'm Ben, Hey Ben,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I was confused that where am I today?

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Speaker 1: It's been one of those. Um. I'm really fond of

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Speaker 1: that expression. Think it's a good way of looking at it,

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Speaker 1: because it's like it's sort of like the whole idea

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Speaker 1: of we're all protagonists in our own story. Another expression,

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Speaker 1: you enjoy thank you? Yeah, I do. I do enjoy it. Um,

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Speaker 1: and I enjoy hanging out on this show ridiculous history.

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Speaker 1: That's right. I'm having one of those days too. That's

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Speaker 1: what we're doing. That's what we're doing. We're we're here

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Speaker 1: for that reason, right, are here for that reason? Oh great?

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Speaker 1: That means that our super producer, Casey Pegram is also here. Casey,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna lean back and wave at you. He really did.

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Speaker 1: I gotta thumbs up. So the three of us are

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Speaker 1: people who have had our ups and downs and love

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Speaker 1: without getting too personal. Now we're not in cells or anything,

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Speaker 1: but you know, the course of true love never did

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Speaker 1: run smooth as other people who want to say. And

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Speaker 1: today's episode is about the end of some romantic relationships.

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Speaker 1: It's about the end of marriages, but not in the

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Speaker 1: typical way. Not a marriage that ended in divorce, not

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Speaker 1: a marriage that ended in death, not even a marriage

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Speaker 1: that ended in an nullment. We're talking about something very

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Speaker 1: strange today and it takes us all the way back

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Speaker 1: to merry old England. That's right, Ben. Between seventeen eighty

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Speaker 1: and around eighteen fifty, there was a pretty fascinating and

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Speaker 1: bizarre practice that had gained popularity out of necessity, really

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Speaker 1: weirdly in England. Um. It was the practice of selling wives.

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Speaker 1: Wife selling, Yeah, and that's it's it's not euphemism for anything,

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Speaker 1: and that's literally what it was. That's exactly what it

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Speaker 1: sounds like. The BuzzFeed headline would be an englishmen sell

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Speaker 1: their wives. But there's more to this story and it's not.

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Speaker 1: It's not the same kind of perhaps human trafficking or

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Speaker 1: chattel slavery that you might associate with quote unquote selling

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Speaker 1: a person. So let's journey back to the seventeen fifties. Say,

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Speaker 1: and you're an average you're an average household, you're not aristocratic.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you're working class alas or lower working class, and

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Speaker 1: you run into irreconcilable differences and you as maybe both

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Speaker 1: of you decide amicably that your marriage should your marriage

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Speaker 1: should end, you should dissolve it. Then you start looking

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Speaker 1: into the process of dissolving your marriage, and you quickly

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Speaker 1: learn some really depressing, difficult stuff. Yeah, there's depressing stuff

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Speaker 1: on both sides of the equation. For women of this time,

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Speaker 1: one of the most depressing factors was that they had

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Speaker 1: no property rights. They were basically considered Not only do

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Speaker 1: they have no property rights themselves, they themselves were basically

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Speaker 1: considered the property of their husband. And uh they had

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Speaker 1: no recourse if the husband wanted to and all the marriage,

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Speaker 1: they themselves could not choose to when all the marriage

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Speaker 1: was entirely up to the husband to make this decision.

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Speaker 1: Even worse, and this is something that was bad for

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Speaker 1: the husband, it was incredibly expensive because there was no

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Speaker 1: such thing as a divorce. The first divorce didn't even

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Speaker 1: come around until eighteen fifty seven. So the only way

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Speaker 1: to get separated legally was to get a private Act

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Speaker 1: of Parliament and then have it be blessed by the church.

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Speaker 1: And that private act of Parliament did not come cheap.

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Speaker 1: It did not. And let's step back here for a second,

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Speaker 1: because divorces could occur, but there were something that was

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Speaker 1: essentially relegated to the higher class of people in society

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Speaker 1: at the time. Obtaining a private Act of Parliament would

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Speaker 1: cost around three thousand pounds, and that cost did not

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Speaker 1: That cost was essentially uh a note of exception to

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Speaker 1: Britain's otherwise very very strict law about divorce. And it's

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Speaker 1: still just got you halfway through the game, because if

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Speaker 1: the church didn't want to give their blessing, then you

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Speaker 1: were s o l straight out of luck. Since this

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Speaker 1: is a family show. This was expensive, This took a

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Speaker 1: long time, and people eventually had to find some sort

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Speaker 1: of alternative plan. Also, three thousand pounds for that act

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Speaker 1: of parliament, that is about if we run it through

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Speaker 1: the inflation calculator, that's about fifteen thousand pounds in our

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Speaker 1: modern age. Yeah, yeah, And that three thousand pounds is

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Speaker 1: just the bottom, the scraping the bottom, right, It could

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Speaker 1: easily become a higher fee three thousand, five hundred or so.

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Speaker 1: What factors do you think would have led to any

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Speaker 1: fluctuation in the price? Nepotism? I mean I think so. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're if you're a let's say you are a

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Speaker 1: member of parliament, you're a lord an aristocrat of some sort,

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Speaker 1: then you have the funding to get this act passed through.

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Speaker 1: But it may have been a quid pro quote thing.

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Speaker 1: It may have been when a mutual backscratching arrangement, right,

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Speaker 1: and so maybe if there wasn't some favor that you

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Speaker 1: could grant in addition to being able to pay this

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Speaker 1: three thousand pounds, maybe they would up the price and

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Speaker 1: they say, oh, for you, buddy, it's four thousand, five

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Speaker 1: hundred or something like that. So there wasn't a strict

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Speaker 1: schedule that decided what people would pay exactly. And this

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Speaker 1: was an annulment, right, The average person could not afford

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Speaker 1: an annulment. And again, as we pointed out, these decisions

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Speaker 1: were primarily made by the dudes at the time. So

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Speaker 1: instead the husband would do something that sounds very strange

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Speaker 1: and disturbing. He would take his spouse to the local

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Speaker 1: marketplace or even a cattle auction, a livestock auction. Then

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Speaker 1: he would register his wife as property to be sold,

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Speaker 1: and symbolically a rope would be placed somewhere around her body. Right,

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Speaker 1: was this just like for the symbolism, Like, I don't

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Speaker 1: understand what the function of this rope was, is that

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Speaker 1: it feels some boling, It feels symbolic. It would be

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Speaker 1: around the person's neck, their waste, or their wrist, and

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Speaker 1: then they would have to go stand up on an

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Speaker 1: auction block while people bid on this human being. Because

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Speaker 1: let's be real, I mean, if anything, maybe correct me

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Speaker 1: if if I'm not thinking about this their away. This

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Speaker 1: is sort of a loophole. They're trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: a semi legal way of doing this thing, of ridding

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Speaker 1: themselves of this unwanted property. Yes, yes, spot on, You're

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Speaker 1: absolutely right, because at this time these people might not

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Speaker 1: have any recourse and maybe both the wife and the

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Speaker 1: husband wish to part ways. They may be cooperating in

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Speaker 1: this regard. This is an illegal practice, is definitely a loophole,

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Speaker 1: but the authorities, many of whom probably could not afford

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Speaker 1: and a divorce themselves, would turn a blind eye to it.

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Speaker 1: It would get ignored the way that some other minor

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Speaker 1: infractions are ignored in society today, like jaywalking, for you're

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Speaker 1: rarely going to get busted for that. Did you know

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Speaker 1: that the term jaywalking was conspiracy. Yeah, it was like

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Speaker 1: it was trumped up as a term of abuse for pedestrians. Yep,

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Speaker 1: that's that's exactly true, because this was during the propagation

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Speaker 1: of automobiles. Yeah, we have a car stuff episode on it.

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Speaker 1: There's a really I remember that, and there's a really

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Speaker 1: great Adam Ruins Everything episode about just how cars are

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Speaker 1: actually quite terrible and you know, infrastructure that's based around

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Speaker 1: driving is really just not very functional at all. In

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Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA. Oh, I've got another one while we're

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Speaker 1: on the tangent. Litter Bug is another hit piece. It

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Speaker 1: was created to take the focus away from the amount

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Speaker 1: of waste that goods manufacturers create and put the focus

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Speaker 1: on people. So it's your job to take care of

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Speaker 1: the waste. Brilliant Marcavellian stuff. Total bait and switch or

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Speaker 1: kind of like a sleight of hand, kind of moved

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Speaker 1: misdirection the press. The digitation man nailed that pronunciation. Man,

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Speaker 1: that's a dunk twister. We practiced that off air makes

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Speaker 1: you editing that part out casey, But we're right, you

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Speaker 1: know that this this is a loophole. People are turning

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Speaker 1: a blind eye to it, and at times the description

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Speaker 1: of it seems almost jovial, you know, because what did

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Speaker 1: they do after they made this sale? They drank, They

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Speaker 1: went to a bar. Yeah. Party. What's interesting about this, though, Ben,

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Speaker 1: is that there's something else going on beneath the surface,

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Speaker 1: because on first glance, this entire charade just seems just

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Speaker 1: grossly misogynistic, and of course it is, but there's an

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Speaker 1: aspect that we haven't talked about yet. The woman actually

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Speaker 1: had like a veto vote over who she went with,

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Speaker 1: and she was likely just as ready to get out

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Speaker 1: of this marriage as the husband was to be rid

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Speaker 1: of her. And this was, in a weird way, gave

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Speaker 1: her the ability to kind of control her destiny much

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Speaker 1: more than she would in an element where she was

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Speaker 1: just you know, thrown out of the street with no

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Speaker 1: property right. And we have found specific instances, documented occurrences

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Speaker 1: of this happening. It's not a rumor. There's a great

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Speaker 1: article from the Review of Behavioral Economics called wife Sales

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Speaker 1: by Peter T. Leeson and a few other authors, and

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Speaker 1: they describe in no uncertain terms, specific situations where this occurs.

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Speaker 1: There was a gentleman named Moses Mag's who we have

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Speaker 1: a quote from, in the course of attempting to sell

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Speaker 1: his wife. And I'm not going to do a voice,

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Speaker 1: but it's written. It's written in that way, that kind

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Speaker 1: of condescending way that authors of yesteryear would write whenever

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Speaker 1: they thought someone had a lower class accent, you know.

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Speaker 1: And there's a lot of weird apostrophes, a lot of

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Speaker 1: misspelled words. But here it goes, ladies and gentlemen, I

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Speaker 1: acts laughed to oppose your notice. Her is a good

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Speaker 1: creature and goes pretty well in harness with a little flogging.

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Speaker 1: Her can carry a hundred and a half of coals

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Speaker 1: from the pit for three good miles. Her can sell

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Speaker 1: it well and put it down her throat in lessner

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Speaker 1: three minutes. Now, my lads roll up and bid spirited.

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Speaker 1: I bought her through the turnpike and paid the mon

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Speaker 1: the toll for her. I brought her with a halter

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Speaker 1: and had her cried. Now, gentlemen, who bids going, go

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Speaker 1: and go? And I can't delay, As the auctioneer says,

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Speaker 1: I can't dwell on this lot. Come say, six shillings

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Speaker 1: you're talking about right man? One would think nol. This

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Speaker 1: is Moses mag selling his wife. She consented to be sold.

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Speaker 1: When they finished the transaction, she was sold for six

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Speaker 1: shillings and three gallons of ale. Was that part though,

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Speaker 1: about putting her in some sort of harness A halter? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't understand. You're gonna have to help dissect this

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Speaker 1: one for me a little bit. Then there's something about

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Speaker 1: coal carrying loads. It was talking about what that guy

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Speaker 1: saw as the skills of his former spouse. And now,

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Speaker 1: and there's a bit of a puzzle here, according to

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Speaker 1: these authors, because this sale of someone's spouse resulted in

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Speaker 1: the de facto dissolution of a marriage. Because the dejore

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Speaker 1: the legal way was very, very difficult, but it wasn't

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Speaker 1: the only de facto way to dissolve a marriage. You

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Speaker 1: could have a judicial separation, or you could privately say, look,

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Speaker 1: no one has the time or money for a divorce,

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Speaker 1: but let's just go live separately, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: You could do those things. So it's it's a bit

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Speaker 1: confusing for us to understand how this practice of selling

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Speaker 1: someone in a public space became not commonplace, but became

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Speaker 1: a real thing. Yeah, And I was trying to kind

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Speaker 1: of get to a point about how this sort of

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Speaker 1: afforded the wife a bit more control than she would

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Speaker 1: have had otherwise by consenting, Like you said, she consented

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Speaker 1: to be sold, even though that a bit more agency, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a little bit more agency. And in this article from

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Speaker 1: Motherboard by Ben Richmond called why wife selling was advantageous

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Speaker 1: for wives, that cites that same paper by Peter Leason

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Speaker 1: that you were talking about, and he makes the point

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Speaker 1: that in the records of the Nearing Nearing around three

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Speaker 1: hundred wives that were sold between seventeen eighty and eighteen fifty,

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Speaker 1: all signs point to almost every single one of them

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Speaker 1: being consensual or the wife being all for it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And there's a there's a great point of Gladi Bree

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Speaker 1: of this article, because there's there's a great part of

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Speaker 1: there where they talk about how the concept of marriage

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Speaker 1: has evolved. You know, in twenty nineteen. Most of the time,

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Speaker 1: when we think of people marrying, at least in the

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Speaker 1: Western world, we think of people marrying because they have

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Speaker 1: genuine affection for one another, They like each other. Right. However,

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Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. That's that's relatively recent. Until about

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Speaker 1: two hundred years ago, marriage was thought of as much

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Speaker 1: more of a transactional economic relationship. So Justin E. H. Smith,

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Speaker 1: in an essay for Lapham's Quarterly, has the following quote

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Speaker 1: describing how marriage had been for the bulk of human history.

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Speaker 1: Marriage was for most of human history a variety of exchange,

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Speaker 1: one that consolidated social ties between families or clans. And

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Speaker 1: it's sort of like that conversation we've had before about

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Speaker 1: why people had so many more children than they do now,

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Speaker 1: at least in in Europe and in the US. It's

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Speaker 1: because you would have children as free labor and then

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Speaker 1: as health insurance when you're elderly, they would take care

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Speaker 1: of you. Yeah. And if that, what is that, like

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Speaker 1: a Craigslist post sounding ad for that wife that was

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Speaker 1: up for sale, is any indication I think wives were

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Speaker 1: probably treated as slave labor. A bit too terrible, you know.

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Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Um in the in the Motherboard article,

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Speaker 1: Lison goes on to point out something that I hadn't

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Speaker 1: even considered. Who are the ones that are in the

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Speaker 1: market for these as he refers to them, used wives

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Speaker 1: or unhappy wives. Exactly who it's It's a couple of

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Speaker 1: different possibilities. It could be folks who have just not

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Speaker 1: have been unlucky in love, you know, and just haven't

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Speaker 1: done very well in the traditional kind of marriage marketplace.

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Speaker 1: It could be uh, folks acting on behalf of wealthy

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Speaker 1: individuals who are just on the lookout for maybe maybe

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Speaker 1: they're like wealthy you know, widowers or something like that

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Speaker 1: looking for a new wife. Or it could actually be

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Speaker 1: the families of the wives themselves. I see. Yeah. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: the economic argument here is that wife sales permitted unhappy

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Speaker 1: women to trade a marriage that they didn't particularly care

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Speaker 1: for with a marriage that they valued more. So. This

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Speaker 1: seems like an improvised system that was organically created to

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Speaker 1: get around the laws of the time. It is still

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Speaker 1: it's always going to be a little bit puzzling, because

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Speaker 1: there were other avenues for de facto divorce. But Lisa

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Speaker 1: in his team found that wife sales benefited wives rather

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Speaker 1: than harmed them, and they argue that without this institution,

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Speaker 1: at least some unhappy spouses in industrial revolutionary England would

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Speaker 1: have remained trapped in in efficient marriages that they wanted

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Speaker 1: to exit. I'm laughing at the phrase inefficient because it's

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Speaker 1: weird to hear economists des marriage. They weigh in on

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Speaker 1: it in the following perspective. The way that we think

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Speaker 1: of marriage from an economic perspective is to think about

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Speaker 1: how much each of the spouse's value being in the

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Speaker 1: marriage relative to one another and relative to living outside

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Speaker 1: the marriage. So it makes sense to me that an

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Speaker 1: economist would look at this from a value based, transactional

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Speaker 1: perspective rather than like the love, the you know, the romance,

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Speaker 1: the sticking together for the kids, all the things that

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Speaker 1: are so common today. Right, it seems that we are

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Speaker 1: in a very privileged position where we have more agency

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Speaker 1: in our own relationships. Regardless of who you are and

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Speaker 1: how you identify. The truth of the matter is that

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Speaker 1: you can marry people because you like them now instead

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Speaker 1: of needing to you know, end the blood feud between

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Speaker 1: your clans, or to get a dowry and so on.

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Speaker 1: What even as a dowry, it's the it's the payoff

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Speaker 1: that the bride's family gives to the group. So it's

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Speaker 1: just a cash cash offering. Basically, I think it could

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Speaker 1: be it could be a bartering thing. It could be property. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's it's brought like you marry, you agree to marry someone,

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Speaker 1: at least traditionally, and then the bride comes with maybe

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Speaker 1: it's uh maybe it's land, right, maybe it's livestock, maybe

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Speaker 1: it's just straight up cash. But you know, loophole this

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Speaker 1: thing was. It really started to kind of lose its luster,

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Speaker 1: and husbands who were trying to sell their wives kind

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Speaker 1: of became a little bit looked at a social pariah's

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Speaker 1: and it just wasn't done, you know what I mean. Um,

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Speaker 1: So the practice kind of went away, But apparently the

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Speaker 1: Vintage News writes that they found a case as recently

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Speaker 1: as nineteen thirteen when a woman um said that her

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Speaker 1: husband sold her to one of his work buddies for

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Speaker 1: one pound. So that's obviously an outlier, but yeah, what

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Speaker 1: an interesting practice, and the whole idea that it was

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Speaker 1: somehow better than the alternative, uh for for women. But yes,

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Speaker 1: So the decline of wife sales largely coincided with the

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Speaker 1: rise of more equal property rights and the ease of

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Speaker 1: getting a legitimate or de jure divorce. Uh. Also, the

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Speaker 1: speeches from these people who are attempting to sell their

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Speaker 1: sell their spouses are are so strange. For instance, there's

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Speaker 1: one guy in eighteen thirty two, I just want to

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Speaker 1: list this off. He lists his spouses bad and good

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Speaker 1: qualities as he saw them. He called her a born

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Speaker 1: serpent and advised prospective buyers to avoid frolicsome women as

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Speaker 1: you would a mad dog, a roaring lion, a loaded

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Speaker 1: pistol cholera. Then he listed her assets, which included the

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Speaker 1: ability to milk cows, uh, the ability to sing well,

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Speaker 1: and to be a great drinking companion. And apparently they

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Speaker 1: were still friends afterward, which is to me just the

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Speaker 1: strangest thing. And uh, you know, if you are listening

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Speaker 1: and you are married, or you have been married, or

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Speaker 1: you are engaged, congratulations, I absolutely wish you the best. Please, please, please,

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Speaker 1: whatever you do, don't try to sell your spouse. Just

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Speaker 1: don't do it. It's so weird. It's a bad look.

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Speaker 1: It's not a good look. Yeah. It's poor, poor form,

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Speaker 1: very poor form. And thankfully, in this day and age,

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Speaker 1: it is illegal. Yeah. I mean it was illegal back then,

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Speaker 1: but the authorities seemed perfectly willing to throw to turn

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Speaker 1: a blind eye to it. Certainly would not be the

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Speaker 1: case today. I think this would be highly frowned upon

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Speaker 1: um and you probably wouldn't be able to get away

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Speaker 1: with human trafficking. That's what that's the word. That's the word.

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Speaker 1: We hope that you enjoyed today's episode, and as always,

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Speaker 1: we would love to hear h some of your takes,

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Speaker 1: your feedback, or your understanding of similar situations if some

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Speaker 1: occurred in your neck of the Global Woods. You can

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Speaker 1: find us on Instagram. You find us on Facebook. You

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Speaker 1: can speak with your fellow ridiculous historians on our Facebook

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Speaker 1: page Ridiculous Historians. Yeah, if you want to check out

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Speaker 1: me and my various adventures around town with my weird

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Speaker 1: ten year old, you can check me out at Embryonic

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Speaker 1: Inside on Instagram. And I believe when this episode comes out,

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Speaker 1: I'll either have just returned or be on the way

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Speaker 1: to the d MZ. So if you want to see

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Speaker 1: some pictures of that, follow me on at Ben Bowland

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Speaker 1: at Instagram. Thank you, super producer, Casey Pegraham. Thanks to

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Speaker 1: our research associate, Eve's Jeff Coe, who we really should

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Speaker 1: have on the show at some point. She's got some

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Speaker 1: really cool stuff browing. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed

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Speaker 1: the theme, and thanks to you, Ben Bolland for being

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Speaker 1: a pal and in a cohort. Likewise, no thank you,

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Speaker 1: and luckily I did not find a comic book that

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Speaker 1: I'm pertained to today's topic that was worth recommending, which

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Speaker 1: I think is a good sign for society overall. Agreed,

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Speaker 1: See you next time, folks,