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Wife selling: real or an April Fool's joke?

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  • 01-04-2010 11:34am
    #1
    Dionysus
    Registered Users Posts: 3,420 ✭✭✭


    Is this well-referenced article a sophisticated April Fool's joke? It is 'Today's Featured Article' on Wikipedia today.

    The article says basically that instead of going through the expense of a divorce a man would put a halter on his wife and bring her to a market or fair and offer her for sale by public auction. It apparently went on in England until the early twentieth century.

    This has to be a joke?


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    #2
    convert
    Registered Users Posts: 9,338 ✭✭✭convert


    Dionysus wrote: »
    It is 'Today's Featured Article' on Wikipedia today.

    I think this should say it all.


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    #3
    Ostrom
    Registered Users Posts: 3,483 ✭✭✭Ostrom


    Dionysus wrote: »
    Is this well-referenced article a sophisticated April Fool's joke? It is 'Today's Featured Article' on Wikipedia today.

    The article says basically that instead of going through the expense of a divorce a man would put a halter on his wife and bring her to a market or fair and offer her for sale by public auction. It apparently went on in England until the early twentieth century.

    This has to be a joke?

    I think I remember hearing this in a history of the family lecture - sale of wives to save face. I'm not sure how common it was in Ireland - if at all....?


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    #4
    Balmed Out
    Registered Users Posts: 4,716 ✭✭✭Balmed Out


    who'd want to buy one of them! And if you press the discussion tab your question will be answered. However i have read about the practice beforehand


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    #5
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 91,303 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    I remember singing a petition to get the law in Ireland changed because at that time a man could not be charged with raping his wife.

    The practice of churching a wife after having a baby was also carried on.

    Then there were the Magdalene Laundries

    And the old trick of getting a priest or doctor to counter sign an old relative into a lunatic asylum so you could keep the farm.


    Treatment of women here wasn't all that much better not so long ago.


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    #6
    jos28
    Registered Users Posts: 7,194 ✭✭✭jos28


    Wife selling was traditionally a visible form of self divorce. Men could release themselves from a marriage by accepting a token sum of money from a rival suitor. The first recorded instance was in the 1690s, when John Whitehouse sold his wife for 2 1/4 pence per pound. I kid you not. Have a look out for a book by John Gillis called 'For Better, for worse'. Very interesting read with an entire chapter on wife selling.


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