Talk:Wife selling (English custom)/Archive 4

proposing to add from Edw. Thompson's book, e.g., duress and misogyny
E. P. Thompson's Customs in Common has more material that should be in the article, material that brings out the negativity of English wife selling. For example, while Thompson was criticized by feminists and he defended his work, he also acknowledged a need to consider the nature of wife selling. He probably did not use the word sexism or misogyny in the book, but he described the custom in terms that meet the definition of the word. That is not a denial of sexism or misogyny. I propose to edit consistently with the book.

Degradation: "A public auction ["[i]n the true wife sale"] .... could be degrading for all parties and most of all for the wife."

Shame: "That it was a shaming ritual for the wife is explicit in the symbolism. Most wives ... were at some point in tears. But ... we cannot necessarily infer that she was an unwilling party to the exchange; we know, in ... [one] case, that she was sold to 'her first sweetheart', and her reluctance might ... have come from the shame of the public exposure."

Desertion and income: "In practice the absence of forms had usually favoured the male partner, who could — as poor law and Sessional records testify — far more easily desert his wife and children than she could desert them. The man might be able to take with him some trade; once hidden in the city from the pursuit of the overseers of the poor he might set up with a new 'common law' partner. The wife's outlet from an impossible or violent marriage was normally to the home of her parents or kin — unless she had already found herself a new lover."

Humiliation and duress: "[W]e must remove the wife sale from the category of brutal chattel purchase and place it within that of divorce and re-marriage. This still may arouse inappropriate expectations, since what is involved is the exchange of a woman between two men in a ritual which humiliates the woman as a beast. Yet the symbolism cannot be read only in that way, for the importance of the publicity of the public market-place and of 'delivery' in a halter lay also in the evidence thus provided that all three parties concurred in the exchange. The consent of the wife is a necessary condition for the sale. This is not to say that her consent may not have been extracted under duress — after all, a husband who wanted (or threatened) to sell a wife was not much of a consort." I am suggesting, not that wives were not sometimes sold under duress, but that if they distinctly repudiated the transaction then the sale was not held to be good according to customary lore and sanction."

Coverture: "It was less common for the wives to be harrassed by the courts, since the law supposed them to be acting under the cover or control of their husbands."

Property case: "'Before a room full of men he offered to sell her for a glass of ale, and the offer being accepted by the young man, she readily agreed, took off her wedding-ring, and from that time considered herself the property of the purchaser[']".

Male domination: "The wife sale is certainly telling us something about male-domination", although it allowed "the small space for [the wife's] personal assertion".

Further: "Let us agree, without any reservation, that the wife sale took place in a society in which the law, the church, economy and custom placed women in an inferior or (formally) powerless position. We may call this patriarchy of we wish, although a man did not have to be head of a household to be privileged over most women (of his own class). Men of all classes used a vocabulary ... of ownership ... with respect to their wives ..., and church and law encouraged this. The wife sale, then, appears as an extreme instance of the general case. The wife is sold like a chattel and the ritual, which casts her as a mare or cow, is degrading and was intended to degrade. She was exposed, in her sexual nature, to the inspection and coarse jests of a casual crowd. Although sold with her own assent, it was a profoundly humiliating experience".

Further: "Even if we redefine the wife sale as divorce-with-consent it was an exchange of ["rights over"] a woman between two men ... and not of [rights over] a man between two women. (There are, in fact, records of husband sales, but they could be counted on the fingers of one hand.)... The fact that the ritual took place within the forms and vocabulary of a society in which gender relations were structured in superordinate/subordinate ways is not in doubt."

And further: "The rules of these politics ["of the personal of eighteenth-century working people"] were male-dominative .... [b]ut it would seem that the women had the skill, on occasion, to turn the [political] moves to their own advantage.".

Barbarity: "[T]he sale of wives in England .... [was among] practices of ... barbarity".

Brutality, but observed in a novel and not found where form or ritual applied, because brutalism was applied to a supposed normless promiscuity: In "a major novel, .... [an] episode [of the sale of one wife had] .... its brutal expression", but E. P. Thompson apparently considered this somewhat exaggerated.

Further: "There were suggestions among historians of fifty years ago that a great part of the labouring people in the eighteenth century lived in normless and formless animal promiscuity, and although this lampoon has been a good deal revised, some echoes of it still survive. The wife sale has sometimes been offered as an exemplar of this brutalism. But, of course, this is exactly what it is not. If sexual behaviour and marital norms were unstructured, where would have been the need for this high-profile public rite of exchange? The wife sale was invented in a plebeian culture ... which had a high regard for rituals and forms."

Brutality and inferiority: "Even Eliza Sharples, the 'moral' (i.e. common-law) wife of Richard Carlile, who acknowledged the sale's function as divorce, found the practice offensive and brutal: 'How much better would a quiet separation have been, and each left to a new and free choice. While women will consent to be treated as inferior to men, so long may we expect men to be brutes.'"

Nick Levinson (talk) 21:14, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

proposing edits re soldiers, legality, & monthly
I propose to add content based on the following, including possibly by reduction to supplemental bibliographic noting, all subject to further editing:

Occasionally, wife selling resolved the problem of a soldier, who was reported dead, returning from war to find his wife remarried; the ritual ended the bigamy.

People responsible for law enforcement recognized wife selling as illegal, even if they ignored it, but the general public relying on the custom believed it to have "'perfect legality ... [as well as] justice.'"

The custom was practiced monthly in 1815–1816 in some districts.

Nick Levinson (talk) 22:18, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

proposing several sources underscoring criticism as sexism
I propose to add content, based on the following, including possibly by reduction to supplemental bibliographic noting, support for a new Criticism section, and support for categorization as sexism or misogyny, all subject to further editing into prose:

"Occasionally, poor men sold their wives in the market when they tired of them."

English wife selling is "[empirical evidence of patriarchal culture]".

English wife selling is an example of "the notion that women have traditionally been regarded as the property of their husbands".

"[W]ife sale represented a semi-formal means of transferring the 'property' in the wife to a new freeholder".

"In some .... cases, ... the husband would unilaterally dispose of the wife", i.e., without her consent.

"[T]he husband ... attach[ing] a leather collar around the wife's neck and lead[ing] her ceremoniously to the auction" "emphasize[d] the property aspect of the transfer".

There are many genderal inequalities in law.

The "patriarchal order" is "the superiority of men and the inferiority of women".

"In ancient Greek thought [traceable, perhaps partly, to Plato and Aristotle] can be found many of the ideas which have endured in later thought: ... [including] considerations of equality based on gender ... [and] the concept of patriarchal ownership of, and/or authority and power over women."

"[S]ocial and legal discrimination ... has operated against women's interests".

The social and legal discrimination is deeply rooted.

"[C]ouples often agreed to separate informally, but many men also simply abandoned their wives. Few women, especially if they also had children to support, could afford to do the same."

"Attitudes condemning wife sale and slavery suggested mounting resistance to the subjection of people to a regime in which monetary measurements and interests called the tune."

"[L]egal definitions of dependents ... [including] women ... [made] it possible to conceive of certain categories of persons as private possessions over whom certain individuals (usually property-owning men) claimed authority."

"The example ... of wife sale ... drew conceptual apparatus from patriarchal thinking of centuries-long provenance."

"[L]ate eighteenth-century reformers had to work ... hard to drive home the point that 'selling people is wrong.'"

"[T]he hegemony of market strategies in the wider culture penetrated the plebeian world of marriage negotiation to the point of creating a peculiar form of devorce ["[t]he sale of wives"] that made chattel out of women through a public spectacle of sale and purchase."

"[W]hen legitimate divorce would have been too costly or simply unavailable .... monetary transactions ... reinforced hierarchies: the ritual of wife sale, as a literal enactment of female chattel status, highlighted the subjection of women and exposed distasteful elements of market transactions of people." 

If there is an objection to my editing the article, please post it. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC) (Corrected lack of italicization for a series in a citation: 20:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC))


 * There will be no Criticism section. Period. Malleus Fatuorum 22:02, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If we don't have a separate Criticism section, do you object to integration of critical content elsewhere in the article to essentially the same effect? Nick Levinson (talk) 20:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not in principle, but the Devil will be in the detail. Malleus Fatuorum 21:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

proposing to add medieval wife selling, unknown origin, and Australia
Wife selling "appears to have ... [come] from some unknown point of origin".

Wife selling has been "documented since medieval times in Britain".

The custom was imported into Australia from Britain.

Nick Levinson (talk) 21:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * So what exactly is this adding to what's already there, which mentions a 1302 account? Except for the Australian account of course, which may well be worth adding. Malleus Fatuorum 21:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * When I earlier posted from a different source about an early origin, an editor denied on the ground that the phenomenon began only later. The lede even now says it "began" in the 17th century; and I suppose the grant by deed (in the article, for the 14th century) could be distinguished because of lack of information on whether there was an exchange.


 * On the (non)point of origin, it is not uncommon to ask where a widespread practice started; this says it's unknown, which is more informative than not addressing the question. It's not crucial for the article, but it would answer a question for readers until a better answer is established by another source author.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 06:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC) (Corrected by deleting "or so": 06:59, 17 October 2011 (UTC))

Marriage
This section needs revision. Marriages prior to 1753  were registered. In fact a century earlier during the Commonwealth period they were conducted before a Register (i.e. a registrar).

Do have a look at 'Background' in the Wikipedia article on 'Marriage Act 1753'.Chrisemms (talk) 11:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * There was no requirement to register a marriage before 1753, and another Wikipedia article (which incidentally gives undue weight to the opinion of Rebecca Probert) is no authority for anything. There was a fashion pre-1753 in England for people to set themselves up as celebrants and conduct a public service at the end of which they issued a certificate of marriage, but such certificates had no legal validity. Malleus Fatuorum 15:59, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

propose adding on Philadelphia
The following on U.S. practice highlights the similarity to slave sales:

In Philadelphia, the public "shied away from public wife sale.... One imagines that this rite was too close to the actual sale of Africans into slavery in Philadelphia's markets to retain its central tenets of consent and mutual agreement."

"[Prof. Lyons has] found only one instance of the public transfer of a wife from one husband to another, and this occurred before an unsuspecting minister".

Nick Levinson (talk) 06:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

categorizing into sexism or misogyny no longer valid though content and list are
A change in the guideline on categorizing means categorizing into sexism or misogyny is no longer valid and therefore I won't be pursuing it anymore, unless the guideline is changed again to allow it.

Lists may include the article, and I'll probably add it to a list for one of these qualities. Comments are welcome.

This does not change whether content on either quality may be in the article. It is permitted.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Blackstone's view on women as property
I inserted the phrase in the view of some later commentators into the sentence Married women could not own property in their own right, and were indeed themselves the property of their husbands since this sentence, coming between two quotations from Blackstone, appears to be oratio obliqua or at least a summary of Blackstone. I don't think that this sentence is Blackstone's view, but the view of Caine and Sluga. Is there a consensus among reliable sources that "Married women were the property of their husbands" was either Blackstone's view or the general view of the law at that time? Cusop Dingle (talk) 17:04, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Divorce by Act of Parliament
The statement After 1690, divorce was only possible by making an application to Parliament, a process that was time-consuming and costly is attributed to page 15 of Finlay, Henry Alan (2005), To have but not to hold (illustrated ed.), Federation Press, ISBN 1862875421. However, that page does not support the assertion. On page 10 it is stated that the first Parliamentary divorce was in 1669. Cusop Dingle (talk) 17:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * An early version of that sentence appears here, "Until the Matrimonial Causes Act became law in 1857, divorce was only possible by making an application to the United Kingdom Parliament, a task that body was finding increasingly time-consuming. Although the divorce courts set up in the wake of the new Act made the procedure considerably cheaper, divorce remained prohibitively expensive for the poorer members of society.[11] (Finlay)". This is where "1690" was added (by me).  I'm not entirely certain where 1690 came from so it might be best to rephrase the sentence. Parrot of Doom 17:56, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Why don't we just revert to the earlier version? Malleus Fatuorum 18:03, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. I probably had a dozen browser tabs open and forgot to add the relevant citation.  Parrot of Doom 18:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I think that "United Kingdom Parliament" would be anachronistic, since it did not come into existence until 1800 (or possibly 1927). Furthermore, there is no terminus ante quem.  I think the sources would support From the 1550s, until the Matrimonial Causes Act became law in 1857, divorce in England was only possible, if at all, by the complex and costly procedure of a private Act of Parliament. Although the divorce courts set up in the wake of the 1857 Act made the procedure considerably cheaper, divorce remained prohibitively expensive for the poorer members of society.  Here I would cite   Cusop Dingle (talk) 18:53, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks fine to me, go ahead. Malleus Fatuorum 19:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Wife selling elsewhere
It would be good to briefly indicate that the custom existed in other parts of the worlds as well, I wonder why the article is guarded even against an appropriate wikilink. Brand meister t   18:47, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The custom as described in this article didn't exist in any other parts of the world except those already mentioned in the article, and most certainly not in China. Malleus Fatuorum 19:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It did exist in other regions, as the sourced articles Wife selling and Wife selling (Chinese custom) show. See Gender in motion: divisions of labor and cultural change in late imperial and modern China, p. 48 or State, peasant, and merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644-1862, p. 336 for instance. Brand meister  t   19:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This link didn't do much to enhance the reader's understanding of the subject. The opening sentence of the article explains what wife selling is in the English context so the link when mentioning Hardy was unnecessary. I'm not convinced a link to wife selling is particularly beneficial to the article as the custom is explained within this article. Nev1 (talk) 19:52, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No it did not. If you take the trouble to read the wife selling (Chinese custom) (which is a rather poor article written only to make a point) you'll see it has this to say: "two types of wife selling were recognized [in China], both considered illegal. The first type was when a husband sold his wife to a man with whom she had been committing adultery. The second type was when a husband sold his wife because she had betrayed him or because they were no longer able to get along." Where does it mention divorce for the ordinary people, a halter, or a ritualised public auction? Malleus Fatuorum 20:42, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Let's make it plain: if one wishes to persist on the absence of wife selling in areas other than Britain, (s)he should invalidate all related sources (at least those in Wife selling; any article may be poor or short, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's false and untrue). As long as this has not been done, the truth is that the custom did exist not just in Britain. The article certainly would not get bad with the brief indication somewhere that the custom was not unique to UK. Brand meister  t   21:30, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Please tell us where else in the world a wife for sale was brought to market by halter, and willingly auctioned off to someone she knew. Parrot of Doom 21:41, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Wives in China were sometimes sold to their lovers, as seemed to be the case with many such English sales. The customs do not seem entirely different, although I don't object to having separate articles for them. Kaldari (talk) 06:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The definition of wife selling is 'selling of a wife'. Nothing inherent in wife selling requires a halter, a marketplace, an auction, consent or nonconsent, class relevance, legality, quasilegality, or most other characteristics found in the English custom. Even if the English custom required it, other people worldwide were not necessarily bound by English custom or law.


 * Why an article was written is not a criterion for whether it should be linked to. We don't know the motivations behind most articles having been written or edited and don't care. We link to them regardless.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 19:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It would be more correct to say that nothing inherent in wife selling other than in England required a halter and so on, which is precisely why this article is about the custom in England and not anywhere else except the colonies to which it was exported. Malleus Fatuorum 19:50, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree the customs are characteristically different. Since linking of articles is to related articles, not necessarily only those articles that are on the same subject, and wife selling around the world under various customs is related in that all are the selling of wives, is there any remaining objection to linking wife selling (English custom) to wife selling and to wife selling (Chinese custom)? Nick Levinson (talk) 20:54, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not happy about the links, but why not a hat along the lines of "for related customs in other parts of the world see wife selling"? Malleus Fatuorum 21:13, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I applied your suggestion, except that it's for practices rather than customs, so as not to impose a judgment on whether what is or was done elsewhere rises to the level of being a custom, implying, I think, more social acceptance than for a practice. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for correcting the excess line; it looked odd but I didn't realize I had caused until later, when you'd already taken care of it.


 * For the hatnote itself, on the deletion of "or generally", content that applies regardless of nationality would be in the global article and the hatnote should refer to it. The wife selling article, being nonnational, is not limited to content that does not apply to the English custom; it merely wasn't gong to overlap it, and making it into a summary article ends even that. Please restore the wording or offer alternative wording to like effect.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 22:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I have already offered alternative wording by removing the "generally". Malleus Fatuorum 22:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No, what's needed is to encompass content that is nonnational, even if it applies to the English custom along with other practices. What do you suggest instead of "what was there? Nick Levinson (talk) 22:29, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No, what's needed is to write a half-decent article on wife selling, then we can worry about what the hat note ought to say. Right now that article is a jumbled joke. Malleus Fatuorum 22:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

date of origin and probably
The editing of "began in the late 17th century" in the lede to "probably ..." is a start, but the rest of the article may need to be conformed and the sourcing needs to be added to the body. (This talk topic follows the topics Proposing to Add Medieval Wife Selling, Unknown Origin, and Australia and 11th Century English Custom.) Nick Levinson (talk) 23:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh for fuck's, I've just about had enough of this bollocks. Why don't you fuck off and do something useful for once? Malleus Fatuorum 23:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Your specific problem with stating what's sourceable on earlier history being what, exactly? Nick Levinson (talk) 02:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That you have completely failed to understand ... well anything really. Malleus Fatuorum 03:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

11th century English custom
It appears that in the 11th century Pope Gregory VII issued a letter that criticized wife selling and that the letter was at least partly on the English custom. Therefore, apparently, wife selling was happening in England in that century. That the letter was on England is per Wikipedia editor Cynwolfe. The letter is mentioned by Schmidt. This is presented in the wife selling article, under Criticism. Cynwolfe has some doubt about Schmidt's reliability (discussed in the AfD for wife selling or the AfD's talk page); I don't agree but Cynwolfe and I refer to different sources. Nick Levinson (talk) 06:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This is the source ... which goes on to state that "it was perhaps possible... to purchase a bride" which makes it clear that this statement encompasses not just "wife-selling" but also "bride-buying" so it can't be taken as a good reference to the custom predating the statement in this article. Also, this source is from 1873!!! If more modern works don't discuss the letter from Gregory to Lanfranc as "wife-selling" instead of "bride-buying" ... it's probably not best to rest too much on a very passing mention here. I'd suggest consulting Gibson's biography of Lanfranc to see what a modern historian who has extensively studied Lanfranc has to say about the circumstances of the letter. For that matter, a modern edition of Gregory's letter's may also shed some light on the letter. It is entirely possible that the original letter makes what Gregory was referring to clearer - whether it was truly selling a wife (i.e. someone to whom the seller was in truth married to) or if it was bride-buying. This is the problem with google searches for sources, you often miss the context. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:35, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't get this from Google. I had the Schmidt book in hand until I recently returned it. If someone else got something from Google, perhaps, and missing context is a problem with Google search results, but for now we have at least a book source, outside of Google, reporting an 11th-century papal letter, which not Schmidt but a Wikipedia editor says is about England. Since that Pope was Pope Gregory VII and he served in the 11th century, I doubt we have to be talking about a 19th-century letter. I don't know if Lanfranc was relevant, but, either way, he lived in the same century. For all I know, there could have been two letters eight centuries apart. Whether the 19th-century letter was on point or not, it appears Gregory's was, and, if it's about England, we have enough to report that one. Whether a letter discussed bride-buying or other matters outside of this article's scope may be irrelevant to whether it contributes to this article because it discusses wife selling. Further research into a 19th-century letter might also prove fruitful for editing this article, but here the more immediately concerning matter is Gregory's letter. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No, the book that the other editor was using to say that the letter was about wife-selling (which if you'll read page 99ff. in the link I gave shows this is the case) shows that we need to investigate the letter more because that book (which is likely the source for Schmidt's information) was published in 1873. It's not a 19th century letter, it's a 19th century source ABOUT the letter. Lanfranc is relevant because the letter was TO Lanfranc. Look, I specialize in 11th and 12th century subjects here on Wikipedia. I've read a LOT about the time period. Never once have I heard anything about the Scots (who are actually the subject of the bit from Gregory, not the English) practicing wife-selling. Perhaps this is relevant and useful for this article, but you cannot ignore the whole corpus of scholarship on the time period to focus on one book. That's UNDUE. If most historians of the time period (11th and 12th century England) do not say anything at all about a custom of wife-selling (and I cannot find a single mention of such a custom in any of my books), then the information is undue weight without further investigation into the context of this letter. Hunt down the letter and see what the scholars who have studied it say. Don't rely on fourth-hand accounts (which is what this sounds like). Go to the source and then read what scholars studying that primary document say. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:23, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, to look for more evidence of the letter to which Schmidt referred (I don't know that it's a fourth-hand reference and the source he cited is apparently in German, beyond my ability to read, but maybe the latter source has been discussed, along with other materials). It is within Wikipedia's scope to discuss disputes on evidence, but investigation is apropos. Thanks for your points. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:05, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

invisible cases possibly common
Besides the market-place sale form and the contractual sale form, there was the private sale form without a written contract, and of the last there is no count or estimate, because they were not recorded in folklore or newspapers, according to E. P. Thompson, op. cit. (1993), p. 409 (and see p. 410). A sentence should be added to the article, after the sentence on the "about 400 reported cases", to clarify that private sales, meaning without market-place rituals and without written contracts, may have occurred in an unknown number of cases. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:38, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Or, as the numbers are unknown, they may not. Malleus Fatuorum 18:05, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What did you mean to say? What you've said is that the cases in the unrecorded form "may not [have occurred in an unknown number of cases]." Since you also agree that "the numbers are unknown", your statement is self-contradicxtory, and I don't think you meant that. What did you intend? Nick Levinson (talk) 23:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If the numbers are unknown it follows that none may have occurred. Parrot of Doom 23:55, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's no more likely than that it's a large number, and probably less likely. Both follow. And we have a source already accepted for this article discussing the phenomenon. It should be in the article. Suggestions? Nick Levinson (talk) 00:15, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It sounds as though Thompson is speculating, and has no evidence for these private sales. What does he say? Parrot of Doom 00:19, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Secondary-source authors are permitted to speculate; their expertise permits us to report their conclusions. What he says is this: "The numbers [Thompson gives] are of visible cases, and visibility must be taken in at least three senses. First, these are events whose trace happens to have become visible to me. While Menefee and I offer the same general profile, we have both been dependent in some degree on what caught the notice of folklorists or was copied by metropolitan newspapers. There are no sources from which one could extract a systematic sample, and only a scanning of provincial newspapers in every region could pretend to such a sample.2 Second, these were events which had to acquire a certain notoriety to leave any traces in the records at all. A ritual sale in the market-place of a large town might do this, but a private sale in a public house might not, unless some unusual circumstance attended it. Since the second form was favoured in some districts, and displaced the first form generally after 1830 or 1840, we can never hope to recover any accurate quantities. [¶] But it is visibility in a third sense which is of most importance, which offers the largest qualification to any quantities, and which illustrates the slippery nature of the evidence which we must handle. For when did a wife sale become visible to a genteel or middle-class public and hence become worthy of a note in public print? The answer must relate to indistinct changes in social awareness, in moral standards, and in news values. The practice became a matter for more frequent report and comment early in the nineteenth century. But through much of the eighteenth century newspapers were not vehicles for social or domestic comment of this kind. There is good reason to suppose that wife sales were widely practiced well before 1790. The custom was little reported because it was not considered worthy of report, unless some additional circumstances (humorous, dramatic, tragic, scandalous) gave it interest. This silence might have been for several reasons: polite ignorance (the distance between the cultures of the newspaper public and of the poor), indifference to a custom so commonplace that it required no comment, or distaste.  Wife sales became newsworthy contemporaneously with the evangelical revival, which, by raising the threshold of middle-class tolerance, redefined a matter of popular 'ignorance' into one of public scandal." "2My collection probably gives too much weight to Yorkshire ... and to Lincolnshire ..., and it may give too little weight to the West of England." Customs in Common, op. cit. (1993), pp. 409–410 & p. 409 n. 2 (emphasis in original) (page break between "form was" & "favoured in some districts"). At id., p. 411: "[A] graph of actual sales might run counter to a graph of visible sales." At id., p. 412 ff., Thompson is ambivalent on how to interpret regarding visible cases. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:02, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd support the addition of the word "public" where relevant, and a footnote expanding on Thompson's speculation. Nothing in the prose though - there's no point going on a tangent about something with no evidence to support it. Parrot of Doom 08:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 12:38, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The latest article edit, by Malleus Fatuorum, with the Edit Summary "stupid to have the same book twice", deleting the 1993 bibliographic entry for E. P. Thompson, and editing the content sourcing from 1993 to 1991, assumes that the two editions are sufficiently similar to support the statement. Wikipedia requires that citations be to what the citing editor saw; I saw the '93 edition and edited content accordingly and therefore supplied the '93 referent; the requirement means the subsequent editor had to have made the corresponding judgment about the '91 edition. While the two editions have the same pagination, the editions are two years apart and the chapter is not identically titled, and two years is time aplenty for editing by Thompson. I trust that resolves why the '93 edition was cited and the concern about stupidity. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Removing content from talk pages
Nick Levinson (talk) 02:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC) (Corrected by deleting excess preposition: 02:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)) (Corrected via Edit Summary: 02:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC))
 * What exactly was deleted? And please see WP:REDACT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DS Belgium (talk • contribs) 14:08, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * or if this isn't about an edit on the talk page, please be clearer in what you write. DS Belgium (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * While transparency is laudable, Nick insists on tagging every minor change to his own posts. The above refers to this. By and large, unless an edit substantially changes the content of a message and someone has replied to it, it's not necessary to flag every change. Although on the other end of the scale I do recall an editor who commented in an RfC/U and then significantly changed his statement after people had supported it, giving the false impression that they agreed with the change when it's quite possible they did not notice. Nev1 (talk) 14:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * He could use strikethrough nnn where appropriate, and mark routine corrections as minor. You can't expect people to check every single edit made, so if any controversy would arise, other editors might accuse him of trying to hide it among the rest. DS Belgium (talk) 16:09, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm the editor whose editing style is under discussion here. The original poster was apparently mainly referring to this edit and, by implication, the edit linked to by Nev1 above.


 * I tend to work on controversial content and therefore tend to get accused quite a bit. I therefore tend to lean over backwards toward things like transparency.


 * Specific edits can be determined from diffs. What I write in the sig block about edits is akin to what should be in the Edit Summary; because I put it into the sig block, I reference that in the Edit Summary. Usually, these edits are corrections; I don't like editing (as some editors do) by doing many successive edits to Wikipedia; instead, I almost always draft offline and generally proofread a couple of times or more, but errors sometimes slip though anyway, and then, if I correct, I tell concerned people about post-posting corrections. I once saw that an editor substantively changed another editor's post before replying; I notified the latter editor, who had not noticed and was annoyed (rightly). If editing could be classed as minor or not, I don't mark as minor, because otherwise I might be accused of hiding an edit; as a result, few of my edits are marked as minor. Once a post of mine has been replied to, I'm less likely to make even a minor correction; the only instance that comes to mind is when a sig and two subsequent edits all erroneously showed the same time due to an excess opening nowiki element and so I corrected the times per the page history even though the post had been seen (and I said I had so corrected the times). Using strikeout is overkill when I'm correcting a misspelling or a syntactical error; it's more apropos for substantive changes, and even better is to be more explicit narratively, e.g., to write a passage acknowledging changing my mind, something I've done at times. As to WP:REDACT, I'm concerned about using insertion markup, as I think most readers will think the resulting underlining is emphasis and not insertion, and I'm concerned about using either insertion or deletion markup if a minority of browsers (if a significant minority) don't render as hoped, as WP:REDACT implies. The effect on untutored readers of either markup when properly rendered is probably confusing; cf. a hypothetical example, "red is way kind of better than pink." My approach complies with the last provision in WP:REDACT; I think I've always used parentheses; I could detail every edit precisely but I doubt readers want that level of detail, given the availability of diffs, which are available through page histories and watchlists.


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 05:27, 26 October 2011 (UTC) (Corrected a misspelling, deleted an excess "that", and inserted a missing space: 05:39, 26 October 2011 (UTC))

Hardy novel's credibility
The Thomas Hardy novel, mentioned in the article and sourced to Gibson, is treated also in E. P. Thompson's 1993 work, wherein Thompson questions the accuracy of Hardy's depiction of a ritual wife sale, doubting its typicality. This doubt should be reflected in the article, where the novel itself gets significant descriptive attention, including in the lede. Thompson says, "Thomas Hardy was a superbly perceptive observer of folk customs, and his touch is rarely more sure than in this novel. But in the episode of Michael Henchard's sale of his wife, Susan, in a wayside fair to a passing sailor, Hardy appears to have relied, not upon observation (or direct oral tradition) but on newspaper sources. These sources (as we shall see) are usually enigmatic and opaque. And the episode, as drawn in the novel, in its seemingly casual provenance and in its brutal expression, does not conform to more 'typical' evidence. The auction of Susan Henchard lacks ritual features; the purchaser arrives fortuitously and bids on impulse. Hardy succeeds admirably, in his reconstruction of the episode and in his disclosure of its consequences, in presenting the general popular consensus as to the legitimacy of the transaction and as to its irrevocable character — a conviction certainly shared by Susan Henchard...." Thompson continues to analyze the novel, addressing, inter alia, the purchase as being "a direct chattel purchase", according to Thompson an error. Customs in Common, op. cit. (1993), pp. 405–406 (and see p. 447) (page break between "by Susan" & "Henchard"). Nick Levinson (talk) 04:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That doubt should be reflected in the article on Hardy's novel, not here, as the details are not discussed or relevant here. Malleus Fatuorum 18:01, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Either the article's non-lede description of the wife sale attributed to the novel should be deleted from the article or shrunk down (saying the novel is about a wife sale is one thing but saying more about the fictional sale without qualification is problematic) or the description should be balanced by the critique. Because this article has a description with some substance, it needs a change one way or the other, regardless of what's in another article. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Have I ever mentioned that I think your only intention here is to be a complete pain in the ass? Which, to to be fair to you, you clearly excel at. Malleus Fatuorum 00:42, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Stick to sources and Wikipedia's standards and you'll do better than you did in your last post. Feel free to try again at making an editorial suggestion or please edit in accord with the above. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:18, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My last post had the virtue of honesty, whereas all of yours reek of dishonesty and ignorance. Malleus Fatuorum 03:31, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Disagreement between editors doesn't make me dishonest. And your marking "ignorance" as "a bit" and minor is interesting, but the alleged ignorance is refuted in my, or perhaps our, posts. When you disagree on texts, it's apropos to point out specific wording that might make your case. Feel free to do so. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I considered whether Hardy's description of a wife sale as exaggerated belongs in the article about the novel but I think that amounts to a critique that a novel is partly fictional, and that's inherently redundant, because fiction is always partly fictional. Whether another editor puts it there is up to editors there, but since the novel is cited in this article for its description, then its (in)accuracy is relevant as a neutrality issue for this article.


 * I've found another source to that end, covering both sides of that issue. I propose editing this article to add approximately the following:


 * Some authors argue that the novel's depiction of a wife sale is exaggerated, while another presents it "to illustrate ... [the] practice" as "well documented in legal texts."


 * Nick Levinson (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

New examples - advice/help
I have full descriptions of three separate examples of this practice occurring in Cornwall in the mid-19th century, as reported at the time by the West Briton newspaper. One is quoted in full below; another example is from 1853: this was a case before the Superintendent Registrar at Bodmin where a couple wishing to marry produced "a bill of sale for a wife" hoping it had legal currency as ending the woman's previous marriage. The third is from the other end of the county at Callington, where a man sold the missus for 2s, 6d outside the market boozer at 9pm on 5 January 1846.

I see there are no shortage of examples but the following one seems unusual in the droll approach taken by the newspaper which is somewhat unusual for the era, given the moral outrage usually engendered (the article notes the changing attitudes after the early 19th c.). The application for and collection of the market-toll is also IMHO noteworthy.

Advice on which bits are appropriate and how to work them into the article would be appreciated, especially as this is a) FA and b) I understand is the subject and by-product of recent unhappinesses.

A WIFE SOLD IN ST AUSTELL

On Friday last the people assembled at St Austell were surprised by the appearance of a man of advanced age leading a woman of about thirty, by a halter which was tied round her waist. The fellow is named George Trethewey, a labourer residing in the parish of St Stephens, in Branwell, and having become tired of his wife, he adopted this mode of leading her into the market, in order to dispose of her to the best bidder....Amongst those assembled were two itinerant tinkers, who travel in company; one of them offered two-pence for the woman, and after some time his companion doubled the sum, stating they were acting in partnership. The husband agreed to accept the last offer, when four-pence was handed to him, and the woman delivered to her purchaser with whom she proceeded to a pot-house, where they regaled themselves with a jug of ale. Meanwhile the collector of the market-tolls applied to the husband for a penny; the sum usually demanded for selling a pic, &c. This was at once paid... 27 March 1835

[Trethewey then proceeded to select a replacement for his wife, and after a violent struggle with a man who laid prior claim to the woman chosen, made off with his new acquisition.]

Life In Cornwall In The Mid-Nineteenth Century - Being extracts from the West Briton Newspaper In The Two Decades From 1835 to 1854 - Selected And Edited By R.M. Barton. D Bradford Barton. Truro. 1971. Got no ISBN, sorry.

Plutonium27 (talk) 15:17, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

critique as misogynist by Hilaire Barnett
I propose to add approximately the following critique, supporting that wife sale is sexist or misogynist: According to law lecturer Hilaire A Barnett, wife selling "facilitated the semiformal transfer of ownership of a wife to another man.... [The] illustration ... [of this] convey[s] [a] powerful cultural message ... which emphasise[s] the cultural subservience in which women were traditionally held." "[T]he women [wives] ... [were] conceptually regarded by both law and society, as a mere chattel.... [W]ife-sale carries with it immense symbolism as to status of women and the manner in which women were viewed as chattels of their husbands." Nick Levinson (talk) 22:51, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

proposal to add on motivation
Motivation is partly covered already, and I propose to add that a wife's property could be seized by her (former) husband and that desertion could be prosecuted in church courts.

I propose to add approximately the following: According to English law lecturer Hilaire A Barnett, desertion could be prosecuted in an ecclesiastical court and, without a divorce or a sale, the separating husband might seize property that was functionally hers but, because they were married, was by law his.

In addition, I propose to add citational footnotes as support for approximately the following already in the article: Wife selling was an alternative not only to an expensive divorce, if available at all, but also to desertion. Without a divorce or a sale, the wife might incur a debt for which the current husband would be liable.

Nick Levinson (talk) 23:24, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * That first paragraph might be a good addition to the article on desertion. I'm not sure it works here, though. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:39, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The article already mentions one prosecution for desertion, so this would contextualize it for the English custom, especially since desertion was far more prevalent than sale, and thus its risk was a consideration. The other article's subsection on the subject is abandonment and that, being subject to globalization, seems too short to include what, for all I know, is unique to England. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:01, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This article isn't about women's rights, or their property.
 * Your posts here are repetitive, and are becoming disruptive. If you really believe strongly that Wife selling was sexist and that this article is not comprehensive, then for heaven's sake take it to somewhere prefixed with Parrot of Doom 00:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

An account of wife selling in 1787
I found this while looking for something else (honest!), middle column, about two thirds of the way down, beginning "A correspondent who may be relied on...". I had a quick look but couldn't see any reference to it here, so I thought I'd pass it on, in case it was useful. No worries if not! I've posted this to Malleus Fatuorum's talk page too. Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 18:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC) p.s. Scroll up to page 13 in the Google Books preview linked above for clear reference to a publication date for this on 11 January 1787. The intervening page 14 is missing from the preview - or, it is for me at any rate!

See Also - Organ Trade
I created a see also section and added the link to organ trade. ‎Malleus Fatuorum undid my edit with the following explanation: "I hate stupid arseholes who don't understand the purpose of a See also section". So...what's the purpose of the see also section? From my perspective...the topic of selling organs is more than just peripherally relevant to the topic of selling wives. --Xerographica (talk) 01:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Let's have the full story Xerographica, not just your edited highlights. You added that daft link with the explanation that "I hate pages without see also sections". Don't you agree that's pretty dumb? Malleus Fatuorum 01:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * What difference does my explanation make? Either selling organs is...or it isn't...peripherally relevant to selling people.  How would my explanation possibly alter the relevance?  My explanation was additional information.  I am a browser...which means that from my perspective, a page without a see also section is an educational dead end.  If people aren't interested in peripherally relevant topics then the see also section does them absolutely no harm.  But if people are interested in peripherally relevant topics...then the existence of a see also section might benefit them.  Therefore, it is our responsibility, as editors, to provide readers with topics in the see also section that are at least peripherally relevant.  --Xerographica (talk) 01:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Xerographica, your personal preferences aside, see WP:SEEALSO: "The links in the "See also" section should be relevant, should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic, and should be limited to a reasonable number...Thus, many high-quality, comprehensive articles do not have a "See also" section." This tells us two things: first, that topics that are only peripherally relevant should not be included; and second, that an article which is comprehensive (a requirement for featured status, which this article has) need not have any such section. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you should have continued reading..."The links in the "See also" section do not have to be directly related to the topic of the article, because one purpose of the "See also" links is to enable readers to explore topics that are only peripherally relevant." --Xerographica (talk) 07:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The edit summary was unfortunate, but I agree completely that it's a not a link that would belong in a see also section on this topic. I don't even see how it's peripherally related. --Onorem♠Dil 07:26, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 1st batter up didn't understand the point of the see also section. 2nd batter up didn't understand the point of reading the entire see also policy.  And here you are...the 3rd batter up...and you need me to explain why selling body parts is relevant to selling entire bodies.  Forget it...there's no way I can explain it without sounding extremely condescending.  --Xerographica (talk) 08:05, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * There is no relationship between a form of divorce and the trade in organs. Your addition was irrelevant. Parrot of Doom 10:48, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If it's merely a form of divorce then put your money where your mouth is and remove this article from the business/economics portal. --Xerographica (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You're just making yourself look foolish. I couldn't care less about portals - as, I suspect, is the case for about 99.9% of people who visit Wikipedia.  By the way, do you often create articles with absolutely no citations or sources? Parrot of Doom 13:39, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Like Parrot of Doom, I couldn't care less about portals. I didn't add this article to the Economics/business portal, so why not ask whoever did? I didn't even know there was such a portal. But you've still to explain the similarity of organ selling to a form of divorce. Should be interesting to see what you manage to come up with, or more what likely you don't manage to come up with. If you consider wife selling to be a sale of bodies, which I don't, then surely a more obvious link would be to slavery? I'd be particularly interested to hear from you of any cases in which someone succeeded in setting up a business to sell wives in 18th or 19th-century England. Malleus Fatuorum 14:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * No, a page without wikilinks would be an "educational dead end". Malleus Fatuorum 14:35, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't see that Organ trade is "peripherally relevant". It's more like "extremely tenuously relevant". --Dweller (talk) 15:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * What about the concept of self ownership? Is it...A. "relevant" or B. "peripherally relevant" or C. "extremely tenuously relevant"?  --Xerographica (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * How about D. "completely irrelevant"? Parrot of Doom 21:35, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * So women being the property of their husbands is "completely irrelevant" to the concept of self ownership? Here's what it says in the article...
 * Women were completely subordinated to their husbands after marriage, the husband and wife becoming one legal entity, a legal status known as coverture. As the eminent English judge Sir William Blackstone wrote in 1753: "the very being, or legal existence of the woman, is suspended during the marriage, or at least is consolidated and incorporated into that of her husband: under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything". Married women could not own property in their own right, and were indeed themselves the property of their husbands.
 * The idea of women being property of their husbands, the idea of people being slaves, the idea of a fetus being the property of a woman, the idea of being able to sell your own organs...they are all relevant to the concept of self-ownership...and as such, they are all at least peripherally relevant to each other. --Xerographica (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * As relevant as an arse is to an elbow. Parrot of Doom 23:41, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

þ vs y
Per this diff, where the letter "þ", or thorn, was swapped back to a "y", I thought that's probably right for a 17th century source – it would presumably have been "þ" in a much earlier source – but noticed that the sentence isn't supported by a ref. Nor is the information there supported by the reffed source for the next sentence, which I've checked online. D'oh! Though, that 17th century source does use a "y" instead of a "þ". Btw I found another instance of historical wife selling in a book I was looking at the other night, I'll dig it out in a bit and post details here. Nortonius (talk) 09:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Another example, FWIW…
I found this in Murphy, S. (ed.), Cox's Fragmenta An Historical Miscellany, History Press, Stroud, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7524-6329-2, p. 125:

"DISGRACEFUL TRANSACTION A man, a few days since, sold his wife, in a halter, for 1s. 6d. in the public market, at Wellington, and allowed the purchaser a quart of ale to drink his health. Jackson's Oxford Journal, Saturday 8 February 1817 (v.34, p.8)"

Maybe it's already covered in an existing ref or something, but I thought it might be useful. Nortonius (talk) 14:08, 21 May 2013 (UTC)