Devonshire January February 19

WIFE FOR SALE!
“Stand on that table and smile for the gentlemen!”
IT WAS ONCE THOUGHT
LEGAL by many country
folk in rural Devon, that a
man could sell his wife at
public auction, providing
certain procedures were
adhered to.
These included putting
a straw halter round her
neck and leading her -
gently - to the auction,
having first announced
publicly that both
parties were agreed to
end the marriage in this
way: and importantly
that the wife would then
be bound to transfer her
affections to the highest
bidder.
Some wives went for a few pounds
or even a few shillings: others for a
pint of ale or a jug of gin or in one
case, a few shillings and a dog.
The bid accepted, it was necessary
for the buyer to then lead his new
“wife” home by that same bridle and
not remove it until the couple had
crossed the threshold of her new
abode. This, they believed, made
everything legal and aboveboard.
This ‘quaint’ rural custom persisted
in some parts of Devon especially
mid and north Devon (less so in the
south) until shortly before the Great
War, the last wife sale in the county
being recorded in the early 1900s
by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould,
the vicar of St. Peter’s Church,
Lewtrenchard, near Okehampton.
He was an extraordinarily gifted
man, happily married with a large
family, an author, poet, gatherer of
folk songs and composer and wrote
Onward, Christian Soldiers. His was
an ancient Devon family and his
lifelong study of the county, its people
and customs was extensive and
he recorded and wrote about what
he saw and heard
throughout his long
life (1834 ‒ 1924).
Rev. Sabine Baring-
Gould
On the subject of
Wife Sales he wrote
that “many such sales
have taken place, and
that this is so is due to
rooted conviction in
the rustic mind that
such a transaction
is legal and morally
permissible”.
Sold! for half a crown
When he was a boy, he recalled,
there was a man in his parish called
Henry Frise who was ‘a village poet’.
His verses, taken to the manor-house
were rewarded with his dinner and
a crown. He once used half of one
of those payments to buy a wife at
Okehampton market. Her name was
Anne and having bid half a crown for
her led her home still in her halter
the twelve miles to his home, “she
placidly, contentedly wearing the
loop about her neck”.
“I must say that Anne proved an
excellent “wife.” She was thrifty,
clean, and managed a roughtempered
and rough-tongued man
with great tact, and was generally
respected. She died in or about
1843”.
Sold! for a jar of gin
Baring-Gould also recalled a
publican, “who lived some miles
off” who bought his wife for a stone
two-gallon jar of Plymouth gin. She
had belonged to a stonecutter, who
became dissatisfied with her and
put up a written notice in several
public places to this effect:
NOTICE
This here be to hinform the publick
as how James Cole be dispozed
to sell his wife by Auction. Her be
a dacent, clanely woman, and be
of age twenty-five ears. The sale
be to take place in the New Inn,
Thursday next at seven o’clock.
He held the sale, making the woman
stand on a table, and he armed
himself with a little hammer. The
biddings were to be in kind and not
in money. One man offered a coat,
but as he was a small man and the
seller was stout, when he found
that the coat would not fit him, he
refused it.
Another offered a “phisgie,” i.e. a
pick, but this also was declined, as
the husband possessed a “phisgie” of
his own. Finally, the landlord offered
a two-gallon jar of gin, and down fell
the hammer with “Gone!”
The wife who bought herself
Henry Whitfield in his book
Plymouth and Devonport in Times of
War and Peace (1900) writes of how,
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