The difficulty of obtaining divorce until this century gave rise to the formal 'selling' of wives, well-known to readers of 'Thomas Hardy's' novel, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'. For the rich, of course, divorce had long been available; but for the working classes the slow, expensive legalities were a daunting obstacle.

 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, many of them firmly believed that a woman was her husband's legal property, and that he could get rid of her by selling her, provided this was publicly done and certain formalities observed; usually she would be handed over to her new owner with a halter round her neck, always before witnesses, and sometimes with a 'legal' document to confirm the transaction.

 

That invaluable repository of scandal, the 'Sussex Weekly Advertiser', describes several cases:

 

At Ninfield in November 1790 a man sold his wife one evening for half a pint of gin, duly handed her over next morning in a halter, but changed his mind and bought her back 'at an advanced price';

 

At Lewes in July 1797 a blacksmith sold his wife to one of his journeymen 'agreeably to an engagement drawn up by an attorney for that purpose';

 

While at Brighton in February 1799 a man named Staines 'sold his wife by private contract, for 5s and eight pots of beer, to one James Marten of the same place', with two married couples witnessing 'the articles of separation and sale'.

 

The custom persisted into the nineteenth century. Harry Burstow mentions three cases in his Reminiscences of Horsham:

I have been told of a woman named Smart who, about 1820 was sold at Horsham for 3s and 6d. She was bought by a man named Steere, and lived with him at Billingshurst. She had two children by each of these husbands. Steere afterwards discovered that Smart had parted with her because she had qualities which he could no longer endure, and Steere, discovering the same qualities himself, sold her to a man named Greenfield, who endured, or never discovered, or differently valued the said qualities till he died.

 

Horsham Market

Again, at the November Fair, 1825, a journeyman blacksmith, whose name I never learned, with the greatest effrontery exhibited for sale his wife, with a halter round her neck. She was a good-looking woman with three children, and was actually sold for £2 5s, the purchaser agreeing to take one of the children. This 'deal' gave offence to some who were present, and they reported the case to the 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 'pin-toe Nanny' or 'Nanny pin-toe', was sold for £1 10s. Nanny was led into the market place with a halter round her neck. Many people hissed and booed, but the majority took the matter good-humouredly. She was 'knocked down' to a man named Johnson, at Shipley, who sold his watch to buy her for the above sum. This bargain 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 marrying a man named Jim Smith, with whom she apparently lived happy for many years.

 

Nanny may have been the last woman sold at Horsham, but an editorial note in the 'Sussex County Magazine' for 1926 asserts that the practise survived elsewhere to the very end of the last century.

 

As late as 1898 the old belief that it was quite legal for a man to sell his wife had not quite died out, for the newspapers of the day reported that at the end of the harvest at Yapton, near Littlehampton, a man 'sold his wife to a stranger for 3s'.

 

 

 

 

 

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