The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-12-08

court recently, where a Worcester
shire farmer declared that he had pur-
chased a neighbours wife for pipe OF
tobacco, says the st. James Gazette.
Such things were common enough
when the world was three generations
younger, and are common enough II
we are to believe all we hear in rural
England to-day. 1t is doubtful whether
an old custom ever quite dies out all
over the world. and human beings will
be sold, no doubt, as long as there are
human beings to sell them. But we
may be sure that the trade in wives
will never be revived again in Eng
land as 1t was a hundred years ago.
There are sere and yellow files In
Printing House Square which take us
back into a strange England which
none of us have ever known, and few
of us can dream of. Four years be-
fore the nineteenth century dawned-
in March, 1796-the Times announced
the sale of wife in Sheffield for six
pence, and a little while afterward the
same paper solemnly Informed the
public that the price of wives had
risen in Smithfield Market from half
a guinea to three guineas and half.
They were good old times, indeed. for
the man who wanted to get rid of the
woman he had sworn to cherish. In
1903, It is recorded, a man led his
wife by halter into the cattle market
at Sheffield and sold her for a guinea.
The market value of a wife seems to
have dropped as the century grew
older, for in 1920 a worthy husband at
Canterbury placed his wife in a cattle
pen and disposed of her for five shil-
lings. The century had run through
more than half its course when the
good people Of Derby had the oppor-
tunity of buying the wife of one of
their fellow townsmen. The woman was
led 70 the market place with halter
round her waist and was knocked down
for eighteen pence and a quart OF beer.
That was in 1855, but we need not go
back nearly so far for evidence Of the
wife trade. Thirty years later-in the
eighties-a collier sold his wife at
Alfreton, in Derbyshire, for fourpence,
and In the same decade In the year OF
grace in which the bells rang for the
Jubilee Of the Victorian era, two
Sheffield men agreed to the buying and
selling Of a wife in public house In
the smoky city. AT the Royal Oak,
Sheffield" the agreement ran, a. ABB
raham Boothroyd. ageed to sell my
wife, Clara, to William Hall, both Of
Sheffield. for the sum of FIVE shillings."
There Is not even the relief in these
cases Of consoling ones self with the
reflection that the sale of the wife is
q thing Of impulse. Often enough II
Is a deliberate commercial transaction
I'm cold blood. as in the case that came
to light few years ago In which the
wife, with her parents and two friends,
met to arrange the terms of the sale.
The price was fixed at thirty shillings
and the bill Of sale ran: Mr.. ----
10 have my wife, Elizabeth ------, free
from me forever, TO do as she has a
mind, this day. December IL, 1893"
The notion that man may sell
his wife and marry again is incredibly
common among certain classes OF the
population. A prisoner at Leeds, on his
trial for blgamy, pleaded that the
charge could not stand, as he had sold
his wife for shillings sixpence, and
was therefore entitled to marry again.
The case Is barely six years old, and
about the same time another instance
was reported from village near Dom