Devonshire January February 19

in December, 1822, the Plymouth
town crier was sent out and about in
Modbury Market to announce that
James Brooks was about to dispose
of his wife by public auction. The
lady was advertised as young and
handsome and would arrive at the
auction on horseback at precisely
midday.
Sure enough the lady arrived,
attended by the ostler of the Lord
Exmouth public house and the
husband invited the bidding. The
first was for five shillings, then the
sums offered mounted slowly to
two pounds. Whereupon the ostler
called out “Three pounds!” and she
would have been knocked down to
him had not two town watchmen
intervened and escorted the pair to
the Guildhall, followed by a crowd.
When the mayor took them to task,
the husband declared that for the
life of him he could not see that he
was doing wrong. He and his wife
had agreed to the sale, as they had
not lived together for long, and were
ill-assorted, and therefore desired
fresh partners.
It transpired that the ostler was
buying her at a reserved price, at
which she had valued herself. There
was a gentleman, the lady said, a Mr.
K., whom she had expected to turn
up and bid for her.”I was very much
annoyed,” she told the mayor, ”to find
that he had not kept his promise. But
I was so determined to be loosed
from Mr. Brooks, that when Mr. K.
did not attend, I asked the ostler to
buy me with my own money”.
The justices bound the loveless
pair over in sureties to be of good
behaviour, and dismissed them.
Unsold at 18 pence - and a
tragedy
The Rev. W. H. Thornton, vicar of
North Bovey, recalled: “In March of
this year (1906), I was investigating
in North Devon a remarkable
instance of suicide, and a still
more remarkable verdict thereon.
My informant was an old poacher
and fisherman, and speaking of the
deceased, he said casually that he
came of a curious family, and that he
himself could well remember to have
seen the dead man’s grandfather
leading his grandmother on a halter
to be sold by public auction in Great
Torrington Market.
“The reserve price was fixed at
eighteen pence, but as no one would
give so much money, the husband
had to take his wife home again and
resume matrimonial intercourse.
Children were born to them, and
the ultimate result was the suicide”.
Sold! a wife and children -
for beer
Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge,
wherein a man sells his wife and
child
The Reverend gentleman went on to
say that shortly before he became
the incumbent at North Bovey in
1868, “a man, whose name I can
give, walked into Chagford, and
there by private agreement sold
his wife to another man for a quart
of beer. When he returned home
with the purchaser the woman
repudiated the transaction, and,
taking her two children with her,
went off at once to Exeter, and only
came back to attend her husband’s
funeral, at which, unless I am
mistaken, I officiated”.
Devon was not the only scene of
these wife-sales, writes Baring-
Gould, though they were probably
more common here than elsewhere
and listed several other instances “to
relieve Devon of exclusive discredit
in such matters”.
Sold! for 20 shillings and
a dog
In 1832 a farmer in Carlisle named
Joseph Thomson sold his wife of
three years for 20 shillings and a
Newfoundland dog.
He placed her on a chair, with a
rope of straw round her neck and
then, according to the editor of The
Carlisle Annual Register made the
following announcement:
”GENTLEMEN, I have to offer to
your notice, my wife, Mary Anne
Thomson, otherwise Williams,
whom I mean to sell to the highest
and fairest bidder. Gentlemen, it is
her wish as well as mine to part
for ever. She has been to me only
a born serpent. I took her for my
comfort, and the good of my home;
but she became my tormentor, a
domestic curse.
“Gentlemen, I speak the truth from
my heart when I say may God deliver
us from troublesome wives and
frolicsome women! Avoid them as
you would a mad dog, or a roaring
lion, a loaded pistol, cholera morbus,
Mount Etna, or any other pestilential
thing in nature. Now I have shown
you the dark side of my wife, and
told you her faults and failings, I will
introduce the bright and sunny side
of her, and explain her qualifications
and goodness.
“She can read novels and milk cows;
she can laugh and weep with the
same ease that you could take a
glass of ale when thirsty. She can
make butter and scold the maid;
she can sing Moore’s melodies, and
plait her frills and caps; she cannot
make rum, gin, or whisky, but she
is a good judge of the quality from
long experience in tasting them.
I therefore offer her with all her
perfections and imperfections for
the sum of fifty shillings.”
An hour later she was knocked down
to one Henry Mears, for twenty
shillings and a Newfoundland dog.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomson then parted
company in perfect good humour,
Mears and his new “wife” one way,
Thomson, his 20 shillings and the
dog the other.
The chambermaid who
became a Duchess
Finally and in complete contrast
there is the extraordinary instance
of Mrs Anne Jeffries, a chambermaid
at the Pelican Inn, Newbury, who
was unhappily married to a Mr.
Jeffries the ostler there.
It was the late 1730s when Lord
Henry Brydges, second Duke of
Chandos, having stopped off at the
inn to dine whilst on his way to
London, had his meal interrupted
by a commotion in the inn yard.
Jeffries the ostler had led his wife
into the yard with a halter round
her neck and was offering her up
for sale.
So smitten with Anne’s beauty “and
the patient way she waited to be
set free from her ill-conditioned
husband”, and notwithstanding
that he was already married, the
good Duke bought her for himself
for half a crown (12½p).
She was his mistress for some years.
In August 1738 his wife died, and
by 1744 the ostler was dead also,
and so the two were finally married
in London on Christmas Day, 1744.
A noble contemporary said of her,
“Of her person and character people
speak variously, but all agree that
both were very bad.” She died in
1759, after which Chandos married
again. Of the noble Duke it was the
King himself, George II who said
of him, “there goes a hot headed,
passionate, half-witted coxcomb.”
So hardly a love match there then.
True love, everlasting
But if you seek a happy ending in the
midst of all these terrible goings-on
you should look no further than to
the life and love of the Reverend
Sabine Baring-Gould himself who
did so much to record them for
posterity.
When he was a very young curate
he met Grace Taylor, the daughter
of a mill hand, then aged fourteen.
In the next few years they fell in
love. His vicar, John Sharp, arranged
for Grace to live for two years with
relatives in York, “to learn middleclass
manners”.
He and Grace were married in 1868,
they had 15 children and their
marriage lasted until her death
48 years later. . When he buried
his wife in 1916 he had carved
on her tombstone the Latin motto
Dimidium Animae Meae which
translates as “Half my Soul”.
He did not remarry and died on
2 January 1924 at their home at
Lewtrenchard and is buried there
at St. Peter’s Church, next to his wife.
JOHN FISHER
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