 Reports of wife selling rose from two per decade in the 1750s , to a peak of 50 in the 1820s and 1830s . As the number of cases increased so did opposition to the practice . It became seen as one of a number of popular customs that the social elite believed it their duty to abolish , and women protested that it represented " a threat and insult to their sex " . JPs in Quarter Sessions became more active in punishing those involved in wife selling , and some test cases in the central law courts confirmed the illegality of the practice . Newspaper accounts were often disparaging : " a most disgusting and disgraceful scene " was the description in a report of 1832 , but it was not until the 1840s that the number of cases of wife selling began to decline significantly . Thompson discovered 121 published reports of wife sales between 1800 and 1840 , as compared to 55 between 1840 and 1880 . 
