0:10

Yeah.

0:23

I've often thought that every single

0:26

romantic relationship is like a country

0:28

all its own, with its own unique rules,

0:30

its own unique social morays,

0:33

and so on, and everybody else is, to some

0:35

degree or another, an outsider.

0:37

But whenever we talk about relationships

0:40

in general, we run into some strange,

0:43

complicated and ridiculous things.

0:45

Hi, I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm

0:48

sorry. I was confused that where

0:50

am I today? It's been one of

0:52

those. Um. I'm really fond of that expression.

0:54

Think it's a good way of looking at it, because it's like it's sort

0:57

of like the whole idea of we're all protagonists in

0:59

our own story. Another expression, you

1:01

enjoy thank you? Yeah, I do. I do

1:04

enjoy it. Um, and I

1:06

enjoy hanging out on this show

1:08

ridiculous history. That's

1:11

right. I'm having one of those days too. That's what we're

1:13

doing. That's what we're doing. We're we're here for that reason,

1:15

right, are here for that reason? Oh great? That means that

1:17

our super producer, Casey Pegram

1:21

is also here. Casey, I'm gonna lean back

1:23

and wave at you. He really did. I

1:25

gotta thumbs up. So the

1:28

three of us are people

1:30

who have had our ups and downs and love without

1:32

getting too personal. Now we're not in cells

1:35

or anything, but you know, the

1:37

course of true love never did run smooth as

1:39

other people who want to say. And today's

1:41

episode is about the end

1:44

of some romantic relationships.

1:46

It's about the end of marriages,

1:49

but not in the typical way. Not a

1:51

marriage that ended in divorce, not

1:54

a marriage that ended in death, not

1:56

even a marriage that ended in an nullment.

1:59

We're talking about something very strange

2:01

today and it takes us all

2:04

the way back to merry old England. That's

2:06

right, Ben. Between seventeen eighty and

2:08

around eighteen fifty, there was

2:11

a pretty fascinating and bizarre

2:13

practice that had gained

2:15

popularity out of necessity, really

2:18

weirdly in England. Um.

2:20

It was the practice of selling wives.

2:23

Wife selling, Yeah, and

2:25

that's it's it's not euphemism for anything, and

2:27

that's literally what it was. That's exactly what

2:30

it sounds like. The BuzzFeed headline

2:32

would be an englishmen

2:34

sell their wives. But there's more

2:37

to this story and it's not. It's

2:39

not the same kind of perhaps

2:42

human trafficking or chattel slavery

2:44

that you might associate with quote

2:46

unquote selling a person.

2:49

So let's journey back to the

2:51

seventeen fifties. Say, and

2:54

you're an average you're

2:56

an average household, you're not aristocratic.

2:58

Maybe you're working class alas or lower working

3:01

class, and you run

3:03

into irreconcilable differences

3:06

and you as maybe both

3:08

of you decide amicably that

3:10

your marriage should your

3:12

marriage should end, you should dissolve it. Then

3:15

you start looking into the process

3:17

of dissolving your marriage, and you quickly learn

3:20

some really depressing, difficult

3:22

stuff. Yeah, there's depressing stuff on both sides

3:24

of the equation. For women of

3:26

this time, one of the most depressing

3:28

factors was that they had no

3:31

property rights. They were basically considered

3:33

Not only do they have no property rights themselves,

3:36

they themselves were basically considered

3:38

the property of their husband. And

3:41

uh they had no recourse

3:44

if the husband wanted to and all the marriage,

3:47

they themselves could not choose to when all the marriage

3:49

was entirely up to the husband to make this decision.

3:52

Even worse, and this is something that

3:54

was bad for the husband, it was incredibly

3:56

expensive because there was no such thing as

3:59

a divorce. The first divorce

4:01

didn't even come around until eighteen fifty seven.

4:04

So the only way to get separated

4:07

legally was to get a private

4:10

Act of Parliament and then

4:12

have it be blessed by the church.

4:15

And that private act of Parliament did not come

4:17

cheap. It did not. And let's

4:19

step back here for a second, because divorces

4:21

could occur, but there were something

4:23

that was essentially relegated

4:26

to the higher class

4:29

of people in society at the time. Obtaining

4:31

a private Act of Parliament would

4:33

cost around three thousand pounds,

4:37

and that cost did

4:39

not That cost was

4:41

essentially uh a note of

4:43

exception to Britain's

4:45

otherwise very very strict law

4:48

about divorce. And it's still

4:50

just got you halfway through the game,

4:53

because if the church didn't

4:55

want to give their blessing, then you were s o l

4:57

straight out of luck. Since this is a family show.

5:00

This was expensive, This took

5:03

a long time, and

5:05

people eventually had to find some sort of

5:08

alternative plan. Also,

5:11

three thousand pounds for that

5:13

act of parliament, that is

5:15

about if we run it through the inflation calculator,

5:18

that's about fifteen thousand pounds in

5:21

our modern age.

5:23

Yeah, yeah, And that three thousand

5:25

pounds is just the bottom, the

5:27

scraping the bottom, right, It could easily become

5:30

a higher fee three thousand, five hundred

5:32

or so. What factors do you think would have led to any fluctuation

5:35

in the price? Nepotism?

5:37

I mean I think so. Yeah, if you're if you're

5:40

a let's say you are a member

5:42

of parliament, you're a lord

5:44

an aristocrat of some sort, then you

5:47

have the funding to get

5:49

this act passed through. But it may have been a quid

5:51

pro quote thing. It may have been when a

5:54

mutual backscratching arrangement, right,

5:56

and so maybe if there wasn't

6:00

some favor that you could grant in addition

6:02

to being able to pay this three

6:04

thousand pounds, maybe they would up

6:06

the price and they say, oh, for you, buddy, it's

6:08

four thousand, five hundred or something like that.

6:11

So there wasn't a strict schedule

6:14

that decided what people would

6:16

pay exactly. And this

6:19

was an annulment, right, The average

6:22

person could not afford an annulment. And

6:24

again, as we pointed out, these decisions

6:26

were primarily made by the dudes at

6:28

the time. So instead

6:31

the husband would do something that sounds very

6:33

strange and disturbing. He would

6:36

take his spouse to the

6:38

local marketplace or even

6:41

a cattle auction, a livestock

6:43

auction. Then he would register

6:45

his wife as property to be sold,

6:48

and symbolically a rope

6:50

would be placed somewhere around

6:53

her body. Right, was this just like for

6:55

the symbolism, Like, I don't understand what the

6:57

function of this rope was, is that it

6:59

feels some boling, It feels

7:01

symbolic. It would be around the person's

7:03

neck, their waste, or their wrist, and

7:06

then they would have to go stand up

7:08

on an auction block while

7:10

people bid on

7:12

this human being. Because let's be real,

7:15

I mean, if anything, maybe correct me if if

7:17

I'm not thinking about this their away. This is sort

7:19

of a loophole. They're trying to figure

7:21

out a semi legal

7:23

way of doing this thing, of ridding themselves

7:25

of this unwanted property.

7:27

Yes, yes, spot on, You're absolutely

7:30

right, because at this time these

7:33

people might not have any recourse and maybe

7:35

both the wife and the husband wish to part

7:37

ways. They may be cooperating

7:40

in this regard. This is an illegal

7:42

practice, is definitely a loophole, but

7:45

the authorities, many of whom probably

7:48

could not afford and a divorce themselves,

7:51

would turn a blind eye to it. It would

7:53

get ignored the way that some other

7:56

minor infractions are ignored in society

7:58

today, like jaywalking, for you're

8:00

rarely going to get busted for that. Did you know that the term

8:02

jaywalking was conspiracy.

8:05

Yeah, it was like it

8:07

was trumped up as a term of abuse

8:09

for pedestrians. Yep, that's

8:12

that's exactly true, because this

8:14

was during the propagation

8:16

of automobiles. Yeah, we

8:18

have a car stuff episode on it. There's a really

8:21

I remember that, and there's a really great Adam Ruins Everything

8:23

episode about just how cars are

8:25

actually quite terrible and you know, infrastructure

8:28

that's based around driving is really just not very

8:30

functional at all. In YadA YadA, YadA. Oh, I've

8:32

got another one while we're on the tangent. Litter

8:35

Bug is another hit piece.

8:38

It was created to take

8:41

the focus away from the amount

8:43

of waste that goods manufacturers

8:45

create and put the focus

8:47

on people. So it's your job to take

8:50

care of the waste. Brilliant Marcavellian

8:52

stuff. Total bait and switch or kind of like

8:54

a sleight of hand, kind of moved misdirection

8:57

the press. The digitation man

9:00

nailed that pronunciation. Man, that's a dunk twister. We

9:02

practiced that off air makes

9:04

you editing that part out casey, But

9:12

we're right, you know that this

9:14

this is a loophole. People are turning

9:16

a blind eye to it, and at

9:19

times the description of it seems

9:21

almost jovial, you

9:23

know, because what did they do after they made

9:26

this sale? They drank,

9:29

They went to a bar. Yeah.

9:32

Party. What's interesting about this, though, Ben, is

9:35

that there's something else going on beneath

9:37

the surface, because on first glance, this

9:40

entire charade just seems just

9:43

grossly misogynistic, and of course

9:46

it is, but there's an aspect

9:48

that we haven't talked about yet. The woman actually

9:51

had like a veto vote over

9:53

who she went with, and she

9:55

was likely just as ready

9:58

to get out of this marriage as the husband was to be

10:00

rid of her. And this was, in

10:02

a weird way, gave

10:04

her the ability to kind of control her destiny

10:07

much more than she would in an

10:09

element where she was just you know, thrown

10:11

out of the street with no property right. And

10:13

we have found specific instances,

10:16

documented occurrences of this

10:18

happening. It's not a rumor. There's

10:20

a great article from the Review of

10:23

Behavioral Economics called wife

10:25

Sales by Peter T. Leeson

10:28

and a few other authors,

10:30

and they describe

10:33

in no uncertain terms, specific

10:35

situations where this occurs. There was

10:37

a gentleman named Moses Mag's

10:40

who we have a quote

10:42

from, in the course of attempting

10:45

to sell his wife.

10:48

And I'm not going to do a voice, but it's

10:50

written. It's written in that way, that

10:52

kind of condescending way that authors

10:55

of yesteryear would write whenever

10:57

they thought someone had a

11:00

lower class accent, you know. And there's

11:02

a lot of weird apostrophes,

11:04

a lot of misspelled words. But here it goes,

11:07

ladies and gentlemen, I acts laughed to oppose

11:10

your notice. Her is a good creature and

11:12

goes pretty well in harness with a little

11:14

flogging. Her can carry a hundred and

11:16

a half of coals from the pit for three

11:18

good miles. Her can sell it well and put

11:21

it down her throat in lessner three

11:23

minutes. Now, my lads roll

11:25

up and bid spirited. I bought her

11:27

through the turnpike and paid the mon the toll

11:29

for her. I brought her with a halter and

11:31

had her cried. Now, gentlemen, who bids going,

11:34

go and go? And I can't delay, As

11:36

the auctioneer says, I can't dwell on

11:39

this lot. Come say, six shillings

11:42

you're talking about right man? One would think

11:44

nol. This is Moses

11:46

mag selling his wife.

11:49

She consented to be sold. When

11:52

they finished the transaction,

11:55

she was sold for six shillings

11:57

and three gallons of ale.

11:59

Was that part though, about putting her in some sort

12:01

of harness A halter? Yeah, I

12:04

don't understand. You're gonna have to help dissect

12:06

this one for me a little bit. Then there's something about coal carrying

12:09

loads. It was talking

12:11

about what that guy saw as

12:14

the skills of his former spouse.

12:18

And now, and there's a bit

12:20

of a puzzle here, according to these

12:22

authors, because this sale

12:25

of someone's spouse resulted in

12:27

the de facto dissolution

12:29

of a marriage. Because the dejore the legal

12:32

way was very, very difficult, but it

12:34

wasn't the only de facto

12:37

way to dissolve a marriage. You

12:39

could have a judicial separation, or

12:41

you could privately say, look, no

12:44

one has the time or money for a divorce, but let's

12:46

just go live separately, you know what I mean. You

12:48

could do those things. So it's

12:51

it's a bit confusing for

12:53

us to understand how this practice

12:56

of selling someone in a public

12:58

space became not

13:00

commonplace, but became a real thing. Yeah,

13:03

And I was trying to kind of get to a point about

13:05

how this sort of afforded

13:08

the wife a bit more

13:10

control than she would have had otherwise

13:13

by consenting, Like you said, she consented

13:15

to be sold, even though that a

13:17

bit more agency, Yeah, a little bit more agency.

13:19

And in this article from Motherboard by Ben Richmond

13:21

called why wife selling was advantageous for wives,

13:24

that cites that same paper

13:26

by Peter Leason that you were talking about, and

13:28

he makes the point that in the records

13:31

of the Nearing Nearing around

13:33

three hundred wives that were sold between seventeen

13:35

eighty and eighteen fifty, all

13:38

signs point to almost every single

13:40

one of them being consensual

13:42

or the wife being all for it. Yeah,

13:45

And there's a there's a

13:47

great point of Gladi Bree of this article, because

13:50

there's there's a great part of there where they talk about

13:53

how the concept of marriage

13:56

has evolved. You know, in twenty nineteen.

13:59

Most of the time, when we think of people marrying,

14:01

at least in the Western world, we think of

14:03

people marrying because they

14:06

have genuine affection for one another,

14:08

They like each other. Right. However,

14:11

that wasn't the case. That's that's relatively

14:13

recent. Until about two hundred years

14:16

ago, marriage was thought of as much more

14:18

of a transactional economic

14:20

relationship. So

14:22

Justin E. H. Smith, in an

14:25

essay for Lapham's Quarterly, has the following

14:27

quote describing how marriage

14:29

had been for the bulk of human history.

14:32

Marriage was for most of human history a variety

14:35

of exchange, one that consolidated social

14:37

ties between families or

14:40

clans. And it's sort of

14:42

like that conversation we've had before about

14:45

why people had so

14:47

many more children than they do now,

14:50

at least in in Europe and

14:52

in the US. It's because you would

14:54

have children as free labor

14:57

and then as health insurance when you're elderly, they

14:59

would take care of you. Yeah. And if that, what

15:02

is that, like a Craigslist post sounding

15:04

ad for that wife that was up for sale, is any

15:06

indication I think wives were probably treated

15:08

as slave labor. A bit too terrible,

15:11

you know. But here's the thing. Um in the

15:13

in the Motherboard article, Lison goes

15:16

on to point out something that I

15:18

hadn't even considered. Who are the ones that are in

15:20

the market for these as he refers to them, used

15:22

wives or unhappy

15:24

wives. Exactly who it's

15:27

It's a couple of different possibilities. It could

15:29

be folks who have just not have been unlucky

15:31

in love, you know, and just haven't done very well in

15:33

the traditional kind of marriage

15:36

marketplace. It could be uh,

15:38

folks acting on behalf of

15:41

wealthy individuals who are just

15:43

on the lookout for maybe maybe they're

15:45

like wealthy you know, widowers

15:47

or something like that looking for a new wife. Or

15:50

it could actually be the families

15:53

of the wives themselves. I

15:55

see. Yeah.

16:01

Essentially, the economic argument

16:04

here is that wife sales

16:06

permitted unhappy women to trade

16:09

a marriage that they didn't particularly care

16:11

for with a marriage that

16:13

they valued more. So.

16:16

This seems like an

16:18

improvised system

16:21

that was organically created

16:23

to get around the laws

16:25

of the time. It is still it's always going

16:27

to be a little bit puzzling, because there were other

16:30

avenues for de facto divorce.

16:33

But Lisa in his team found

16:36

that wife sales benefited

16:38

wives rather than harmed them,

16:41

and they argue that without

16:43

this institution, at least some unhappy

16:45

spouses in industrial revolutionary England

16:48

would have remained trapped in

16:50

in efficient marriages that

16:52

they wanted to exit. I'm laughing at

16:55

the phrase inefficient because

16:58

it's weird to hear economists des marriage.

17:01

They weigh in on it in the following

17:03

perspective. The way that we think of marriage

17:05

from an economic perspective is to think about

17:07

how much each of the spouse's value being

17:10

in the marriage relative to one another and relative

17:12

to living outside the marriage. So

17:16

it makes sense to me that an

17:18

economist would look at this from a

17:20

value based, transactional perspective

17:23

rather than like the love, the

17:26

you know, the romance, the sticking

17:28

together for the kids, all the things

17:30

that are so common today. Right,

17:33

it seems that we are in a very privileged

17:35

position where we have

17:37

more agency in our own relationships.

17:40

Regardless of who you are and how

17:43

you identify. The truth of the matter

17:45

is that you can

17:47

marry people because you like them now instead

17:50

of needing to you know, end

17:52

the blood feud between your clans,

17:55

or to get a dowry and

17:57

so on. What even as a dowry,

18:00

it's the it's the payoff

18:03

that the bride's family gives

18:05

to the group. So it's just a cash cash

18:07

offering. Basically, I think it could be it could

18:09

be a bartering thing. It could be property. Uh,

18:12

it's it's brought like you

18:14

marry, you agree to marry someone, at least

18:16

traditionally, and then the bride

18:19

comes with maybe it's

18:21

uh maybe it's land, right, maybe

18:23

it's livestock, maybe it's

18:26

just straight up cash. But

18:28

you know, loophole this thing was.

18:30

It really started to kind

18:33

of lose its luster, and husbands

18:36

who were trying to sell their wives kind

18:38

of became a little bit looked at a social pariah's

18:41

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

18:44

So the practice kind of went away,

18:46

But apparently the Vintage News

18:48

writes that they found a case

18:50

as recently as nineteen thirteen

18:53

when a woman um said that her husband

18:55

sold her to one of his work buddies

18:58

for one pound. So

19:00

that's obviously an outlier, but yeah,

19:03

what an interesting practice, and the whole idea

19:05

that it was somehow better than

19:09

the alternative, uh for

19:11

for women. But yes,

19:13

So the decline of wife sales

19:16

largely coincided with the rise

19:19

of more equal property rights and the

19:21

ease of getting a legitimate

19:24

or de jure divorce. Uh.

19:27

Also, the

19:30

speeches from these people who

19:32

are attempting to sell their sell

19:34

their spouses are are

19:36

so strange. For instance,

19:38

there's one guy in eighteen thirty two, I just

19:41

want to list this off.

19:43

He lists his spouses bad and good

19:46

qualities as he saw them.

19:48

He called her a born serpent and

19:50

advised prospective buyers to avoid

19:53

frolicsome women as you would a mad dog,

19:55

a roaring lion, a loaded pistol

19:57

cholera. Then he listed her assets,

20:00

which included the ability to milk cows,

20:03

uh, the ability to sing well, and

20:05

to be a great drinking companion. And

20:08

apparently they were still friends afterward,

20:11

which is to me just the strangest

20:13

thing. And uh, you know, if

20:15

you are listening and you are married, or

20:18

you have been married, or you are

20:20

engaged, congratulations,

20:23

I absolutely wish you the best. Please,

20:26

please, please, whatever you do, don't

20:29

try to sell your spouse. Just

20:31

don't do it. It's so weird. It's

20:33

a bad look. It's not a good look.

20:35

Yeah. It's poor, poor form, very

20:38

poor form. And thankfully, in this day

20:40

and age, it is illegal.

20:43

Yeah. I mean it was illegal back then,

20:45

but the authorities seemed perfectly willing

20:47

to throw to turn a blind eye to it. Certainly

20:49

would not be the case today. I think this would be highly

20:52

frowned upon um and you

20:54

probably wouldn't be able to get away with human

20:56

trafficking. That's what that's the word. That's

20:58

the word. We hope that you enjoyed today's

21:01

episode, and as always, we would love

21:03

to hear h some of your

21:05

takes, your feedback, or

21:08

your understanding of similar

21:10

situations if some occurred in your

21:13

neck of the Global Woods. You can find

21:15

us on Instagram. You find us on Facebook. You

21:17

can speak with your fellow ridiculous historians

21:19

on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians.

21:22

Yeah, if you want to check out me and my various

21:24

adventures around town with my weird

21:27

ten year old, you can check me out at Embryonic

21:29

Inside on Instagram. And I believe

21:31

when this episode comes out, I'll either

21:34

have just returned or be on the

21:36

way to the d MZ. So if you

21:38

want to see some pictures of that, follow me on

21:41

at Ben Bowland at Instagram.

21:43

Thank you, super producer, Casey Pegraham.

21:46

Thanks to our research associate,

21:48

Eve's Jeff Coe, who we really should

21:50

have on the show at some point. She's got some really cool

21:52

stuff browing. Thanks to Alex Williams

21:54

who composed the theme, and thanks

21:56

to you, Ben Bolland for being a pal and in

21:58

a cohort. Likewise, no

22:01

thank you, and luckily

22:03

I did not find a comic book that

22:06

I'm pertained to today's topic that

22:08

was worth recommending, which I

22:10

think is a good sign for society

22:12

overall. Agreed, See you next time,

22:15

folks,