The Dhaka Times Desk The Englishmen, who once ruled almost the entire world by making great progress in the practice of knowledge and science, at one time practiced the practice of selling wives in their country. Surprising as it may sound, this practice was still practiced in England in the mid-nineteenth century.
Between 1780 and 1850 there are many cases of wife selling in various newspapers published in England. At this time, Englishmen had to spend at least 3 thousand pounds to legally divorce wives through an "Act of Parliament", which is equivalent to 15 thousand pounds in today's time.
Basically, to save the cost of this huge amount of money, many common Englishmen introduced the practice of selling their wives directly without divorce. In the poorer parts of England, women were treated much like chattel.
Husbands who did not want to keep their wives would take their wives to the market, and with ropes tied around their necks or hands, auctions would be called. In many cases, wives for sale were also advertised in newspapers. It is known that many women agreed to be sold of their own free will to remove the turmoil in their married life. There was no alternative way to end the married life cheaply. Although the practice was legally illegal at the time, the authorities did not pay much attention to the matter.
According to contemporary records, the first instance of wife selling occurred in 1733. In Birmingham that year a man named Samuel Whitehouse sold his wife Mary Whitehouse to a buyer named Thomas Griffiths for one pound.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the practice of this custom continued to increase. As a result, there is naturally a negative reaction to it in the society. Since then the incidence of wife selling gradually decreased.
Finally, in 1857, divorce laws were relaxed in England. But even after this, the sale of wives did not stop at once. Even in 1913, a woman claimed that she was sold to her husband's colleague for a pound.
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