 In Sussex, inns and public houses were a regular venue for wife-selling, and alcohol often formed part of the payment. For example, when a man sold his wife at the Shoulder of Mutton and Cucumber in Yapton in 1898, the purchaser paid 7s. 6d. (£ 40 in 2016) and 1 imperial quart (1.1 l) of beer. A sale a century earlier in Brighton involved "eight pots of beer" and seven shillings (£ 30 in 2016); and in Ninfield in 1790, a man who swapped his wife at the village inn for half a pint of gin changed his mind and bought her back later.
