from Amazon
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wife sales: precursor to athlete transfer agreements?
You don’t see this every day… today anyway, but apparently it occurred in the past. I agree, at first sound, it seems barbaric, abusive, or slave-trading-like. Or how some families sell off their daughters. Just a very sordid appearance to it all.
Wife sales’ winning bidders weren’ t always auctioned wives’ lovers. In some cases they weren’ t even wives’ ultimate buyers-- the men who sought them as new wives. Some bidders were agents operating on wife-seeking clients’ behalf. In other cases wives’ winning bidders weren’ t men seeking new mates at all. They were wives’ family members, purchasing their sister’s or child’s right to exit her unhappy marriage (see, for instance, Liverpool Mercury etc., July 26, 1833; Liverpool Mercury etc., April 6, 1849; The Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser, for Lancashire, Westmorland, &c., December 6, 1806). Regardless of who purchased a sold wife, since wife sales required the husband’s, the wife’s, and the buyer’s consent, the husband, the wife, and the buyer bene ted. As an observer remarked following a wife sale in Southrepps, Norfolk, “All parties seemed perfectly contented and happy with the exchange"(The Essex Standard, and Colchester and County Advertiser, June 2, 1832).
As I was reading the paper, it sounded alot like what soccer athletes go through, that if all sides agree on the operating procedures, it’s something they all benefit from.
But it still feels quite dirty, and I suppose it’s because of the slippery slope argument, that while you can make the case that it’s rational, that this process can (and of course was) extended to its (il)logical conclusion.
Anyway, you don’t see this kind of paper every day, and I’m still trying to sort it out in my head.
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