The only things sold in Nottingham's Old Market Square today are food and drink and arts and crafts. But rewind the clock 250 years and a man could sell... his wife.
As absurd as it seems today, it used to be a way of ending an unhappy marriage before divorce became a common practice. There's two records of wife-selling in the city.
A 17-year-old and her two children were put up for sale in the market place in 1779 - a busy location ensured a large crowd. The woman and her children sold for 27/6 according to local historian John Holland Walker, who wrote about it in An itinerary of Nottingham: The Market Place in 1931.
But, he said, that was not the worst. On April 25, 1852, a man called Stevenson brought his wife into the market place with a new rope around her neck, and standing near the sheep pens in Beastmarket Hill offered her for sale. ''Here is my wife for sale," he announced, "I shall put her up for 2/6, the rope is worth 6d."
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The woman was eventually bought for just one shilling by a man called Burrows. The trio then went to the Spread Eagle pub nearby to sign a contract but the woman was the only one educated enough to be able to sign her name.
Until 1857 divorce was only possible by a private Act of Parliament and even after that remained expensive and out of the reach of anyone but the wealthiest. Nottingham Hidden History Team's Joe Earp wrote: "This obscure English custom probably began in the late 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. After parading his wife with a halter around her neck, arm, or waist, a husband would publicly auction her to the highest bidder."
The use of the halter was symbolic and once the rope was handed to the buyer, it was a signal that the deal had concluded. However, some tried to legitimate the sale by getting the winning bidder to sign an agreement.
"Although the custom had no basis in law and frequently resulted in prosecution, particularly from the mid-19th century onwards, the attitude of the authorities was equivocal. At least one early 19th century magistrate is on record as stating that he did not believe he had the right to prevent wife sales, and there were cases of local Poor Law Commissioners forcing husbands to sell their wives, rather than having to maintain the family in workhouses," added Mr Earp.
History writer and former Sheriff of Nottingham, Catharine Arnold, said it seems incredible to us today but at the time it was not unusual.
"It seems bizarre to us that men could sell their wives and has distressing overtones of slavery to today's readers. Historically, some old newspapers report wife sales where the wife was quite happy to be traded in, perhaps because her new husband was an upgrade.
"In rural areas, wife sales were a solution to the problem of divorce - until the 20th century divorce was not an option for ordinary people. But it's a hard sell to us; we're used to a culture where people can separate from their partners legally or informally, and for a woman to be considered her husband's chattel is understandably considered humiliating.
"I think it's worth remembering that in the most famous case of a wife-selling, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, the mayor in question gets his karma. He gets drunk and sells his wife, Susan, and their baby daughter to a sailor, and even after Susan turns up again years later, it all ends badly."
Rehannah Mian, a former BBC producer turned children's story-telling podcaster in Radcliffe-on-Trent, said: "Parading your wife around as ‘goods’ with a rope around her neck, is a horrendous and degrading thing to do to someone, but history and folklore is full of accounts of perceived ‘burdensome’ family members being treated badly.
"In fairytales and popular literature we see often children married off to wealthy suitors, or elderly relatives abandoned to starve but this is the first time I’ve heard of husband’s selling their wives like cattle. Those men sound more vile than any storybook character to me."
