A WIFE FOR TWENTY SHILLINGS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 141, 4 February 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

A WIFE FOR TWENTY SHILLINGS.

A doc; thrown in to make a BARGAIN.

It wa« long a popular belief among tiio ignorant in England that if a man sold his wife at public auction such a sale had all the legality of a regular divorce. The latent case of the kin.t on record occurred in 1832.

John Thompson, a farmer, had toon married for three years and he an 1 Inn wife agreed to separate. Thompson brought his wife into the town of Curlisle and by the bellman announceu he was about to sell her.

At midday Thompson placed bin wife on a large oak chair with a rope or halter of straw about her neck. He then -made this anonucement: "Gentlemen, I have to offer to your notice my wife, Mary Anne Thompson, otherwise Williams, whom 1 mean to sell t-o t]ie highest and fairest bidder. It is her wish as well as mine to part for ever. "She has been to me oily n born serpent. I took her for my comfort, the good of my home; but she became my tormentor, a domestic curse, a night invasion and a daily devil. "I speak truth from my heart when I say: May God deliver us from troublesome wives and l frolicsome women! Avoid them as you would a mad dog, a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera morbus, Mount Etna, or any other pestilential thing in Nature. "Now I have shown you of her- dark faults and failings, I w:ll introduce thebright 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. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet says of women in general:— Heaven gave women the peculiar grace To laugh, to weep, to theat the human race.

"She can make butter and scold the maid, she can s : ng Moore's melodies and plait her folds and caps; she cannot make rum. gin. or whisky, but she* is a good judge of the quality of each from long experience in tasting them. T therefore offer her. with all her perfections and imperfections, for the sum of fifty shillings." The woman was finally sold to ono Henry Mcars for the sum of twenty shillings r.nd a Newfoundland dog. Man and wife parted in perfect good temper, Mears and the woman going one way. Thompson and the dog another.