 Although the initiative was usually the husband 's , the wife had to agree to the sale . An 1824 report from Manchester says that " after several <unk> she [ the wife ] was knocked down for 5s ; but not liking the purchaser , she was put up again for 3s and a quart of ale " . Frequently the wife was already living with her new partner . In one case in 1804 a London shopkeeper found his wife in bed with a stranger to him , who , following an altercation , offered to purchase the wife . The shopkeeper agreed , and in this instance the sale may have been an acceptable method of resolving the situation . However , the sale was sometimes spontaneous , and the wife could find herself the subject of bids from total strangers . In March 1766 , a carpenter from Southwark sold his wife " in a fit of conjugal indifference at the alehouse " . Once sober , the man asked his wife to return , and after she refused he hanged himself . A domestic fight might sometimes precede the sale of a wife , but in most recorded cases the intent was to end a marriage in a way that gave it the legitimacy of a divorce . In some cases the wife arranged for her own sale , and even provided the money for her agent to buy her out of her marriage , such as an 1822 case in Plymouth . 
