WIFE FOR SALE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 65, 16 April 1943, Page 2

WIFE FOR SALE

Hie husband who, at a matrimonial court in Kent admitted that he offered to sell his Avii'e for thirty shillings "to a man av-lio called at the door," doubtless did not mean to make a serious business proposition. But it may be recalled that the sale of a Avife is the incident which rests the plot, of Thomas Hardy s sombre nove.l, The Mayor of Casterbridge. When Hardy died in 1928 there were some who felt that the novelist had allowed his imagination. to play too freely among the customs of his countrymen. Was it. iair, they asked, to suggest that such a thing could ever have I been possible in England? In the course of an interesting newspaper discussion, however, documents were quoted to show that such transactions, though they might be rare, J were certainly not unknown. One writer recalled an occasion Avhen a tramp, whom lie met in a remote district, asked him if he Avould like to buy a wjl'e. The impression left by the. question was that though the tone was jocular, the offer Avas serious. The wife, a .good-looking slattern, appeared as if she avouUl not be averse to a change in a master. Though marriage laws Ave re. looser in Scotland than in England, we have no knowledge of such a disreputable custom ever having prevailed in Scotland. Nevertheless, manj r strange offences are chronicled in kirk .session minutes and other early records.—Scotsman.