 Public wife sales were sometimes attended by huge crowds . An 1806 sale in Hull was postponed " owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had gathered together " , suggesting that wife sales were relatively rare events , and therefore popular . Estimates of the frequency of the ritual usually number about 300 between 1780 and 1850 , relatively insignificant compared to the instances of desertion , which in the Victorian era numbered in the tens of thousands . 
