Notebook per
Wife_Sales
Citation (APA): Leeson, P. (2014). Wife_Sales [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
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1 il divorzio solo col consenso del marito 2 le donne nn avevano proprietà da offrire => l asta delle mogli aggirava l ostacolo consentendo a un terzo di fare l offerta xchè la vendita domina le alternative? xchè è pubblica potere di veto: l asta aumenta il bemessere delle donne
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Wife Sales Peter T. Leesony
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We argue that wife sales were an institutional response to an unusual constellation of property rights in Industrial Revolution-era English law.
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TESI
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That constellation simultaneously required most wives to obtain their husbands’consent to exit
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DIVORZIO E PROP.
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denied most wives the right to own property.
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Wife-sale auctions achieved this by identifying and leveraging “suitors”— men who valued unhappy wives more than their current husbands,
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PAGARE
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1 Introduction
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For over a century wife sales occurred throughout the world’s most economically civilized nation during an era of unprecedented growth and progress: Industrial Revolution-era England.
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NEL PAESE PIÙ RICCO
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Wife sales were one among a variety of much more mundane methods of dissolving marriage de facto in a time and place where doing so de jure was extraordinarily di ¢ cult
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DIVORZIO DI FATTO
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The existence of numerous “ordinary” methods of de facto divorce in Industrial Revolution-era England, such as judicial separation and private separation agreement, poses a puzzle
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PROBLEMA
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Historians have suggested an answer to this puzzle: wife sales were public
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PUBBLICITÀ
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English law imposed marital obligations on spouses, such as husbands’responsibility for debts their wives incurred on their behalf. To relieve themselves of these obligations in their community’s eyes, divorcing spouses needed to inform community members, such as potential creditors, that their marital obligations to one another had ended.
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SCISSIONE
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This “explanation” for wife sales is unsatisfying in a simple but crucial way. It doesn’ t explain wife sales’most important and intriguing feature: the sale of wives.
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INSODDISF
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Spouses could place ads in newspapers;
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GIORNALI
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Our analysis of wife sales as a mechanism of indirect Coasean bargaining supports the view that such sales enhanced the welfare of Industrial Revolution-era English wives.
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BENFICIO X LE DONNE
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the wives who participated in wife sales chose to participate, and even those who seemed to do so reluctantly had the power to veto their sales.
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VETO
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Wife sales permitted unhappy wives to trade marriages they valued less for marriages they valued more.
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IMHO: FEMMINICIDIO
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A su ¢ ciently unhappy spouse will be willing to pay his or her marital partner enough to secure the right to exit marriage when one or both spouses has veto rights over the decision to divorce.
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DIVORZIO COASIANO
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2.1 Marriage in Industrial Revolution-Era England
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feme sole. Such a woman could own property, enter contracts, and enjoyed freedom of her person. In these respects, legally, she was like a man.
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LA SINGLE
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all the property she owned before marriage, and all that would have come into her possession as an unmarried woman, such as inheritance, her wages from working, and the revenues generated by real estate she formerly owned, became her husband’s exclusive property. 6 A married woman also lost the right to enter contracts.
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SPOSATA
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Her husband could beat her “within reason.” He could have sexual relations with her on demand. And he could “restrain a wife of her liberty”— i.e., imprison her in his home— “in case of any gross misbehaviour,” where he determined what constituted grossness (Hill 1994: 199).
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PROP. DRL MARITO
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In return for surrendering her property rights to her husband, a woman who married received a legal claim to her and, if she had any children, her children’s, maintenance from her husband.
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PROTENZIONE
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Compared to men, Industrial Revolution-era women’ s employment prospects were slim and the wages they earned were low. Many working-class women couldn’t earn enough to support themselves,
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LE DONNE BENRFIVIAVANO DAL MATRIMONIO
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Men also bene… ted from marriage. They enjoyed the economies of scale that marriage conferred.
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... ANCHE GLI U.
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2.2 Divorce in Industrial Revolution-Era England
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In theory, Industrial Revolution-era English law granted husbands and wives the right to exit marriage— with or without their spouse’s consent— under only two circumstances: adultery and life-threatening cruelty. In practice, husbands tended to enjoy unilateral property rights over marriage.
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TEORIA E PRATICA
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After obtaining a judicial separation, the typical husband seeking a private Act of Parliament sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation in a civil court. 10 Victory here was helpful to proving to Parliament that his wife was an adulterer. Having satis… ed Parliament of as much, the Act-seeking husband secured a divorce from his wife that freed him of all…nancial obligations to her and permitted both spouses to remarry. The cost of this process was enormous.
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COSTI ENORMI AMCHE SE LA MOGLIE È FEDIFRAGA
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a private Act of Parliament could run into the thousands of pounds. In 1871 a successful unskilled laborer earned a mere 75p a week
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COSTI
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An unhappy wife could also seek divorce through a private Act of Parliament. But
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MOGLIE
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the obstacles to success she faced were far greater.
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of the 338 persons who attempted to divorce their spouses using a private Act of Parliament in the 157 years from this instrument’s inception in 1700 to its termination in 1857, only 8 were wives. 318 husbands petitioned successfully, but only 4 wives did so
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SUCCESSI
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An unhappy husband could obtain a judicial separation by proving his wife had committed adultery. In this case the court would award him an alimony free separation. Even without such proof, he could obtain a judicial separation indirectly by manipulating the law’s operation. He did this by kicking his wife out of his house.
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MARITI DE FACTO
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For an unhappy wife, separating from her spouse judicially was much harder. In principle the law allowed wives to sue for judicial separation on the grounds of adultery or life-threatening cruelty.
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DE FACTO
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An equally important constraint on an unhappy wife’ s ability to use judicial separation to divorce her husband was the fact that judicial separation left her in a state of feme covert.
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ALTRO OSTACOLO
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Wives were in large part their husbands’property. Thus the law permitted husbands to forcibly return deserting wives to their homes where they could con… ne them to prevent future escape.
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DESERTING
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elopement posed another problem for unhappy wives: it could be hard to build relationships with lovers willing to run away with them in secret. Husbands exercised close oversight over their wives.
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FUGA D AMORE
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The…nal means of de facto divorce in Industrial Revolution-era England was private separation agreements. These agreements were contracts between spouses relieving them of some of marriage’s obligations.
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ACCORDO
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Unfortunately, not all unhappy wives were able to use private separation agreements for this purpose. Until the 1840s, such agreements were not reliably enforceable
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INCO
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This meant, for example, that a husband who agreed to separate from his wife under a private contract but subsequently changed his mind might forcibly seize her to reestablish cohabitation or, similarly, sue for the restitution of his conjugal rights and do so successfully.
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Wives with signi… cant premarital wealth could hire lawyers to make prenuptial agreements that created agent-controlled trusts. These trusts granted wives continued rights over property they owned before marriage and the revenues‡owing from it.
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ACCORDI PREMAYTRIMONIALE
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3 A Theory of Wife Sales
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If transaction costs were low, when a wife valued life outside her marriage more than her husband valued life inside it, she could simply buy the right to exit the marriage from him.
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COASE
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crucial assumption: wives must have something with which they can buy the right to exit marriage from their husbands.
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ASSUNTO
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Wife sales achieve this by leveraging the property rights of third parties: “suitors” who value unhappy wives more than wives’current husbands value them,
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TERZO
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To identify the suitor whose valuation is highest, ine ¢ ciently married couples sell their better halves at public auctions.
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ASTE
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Wives’veto power over their sales is crucial to such an arrangement’
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VETO
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3.1 From Alter to Halter
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Industrial Revolution-era English wife sales were used overwhelmingly by working-class couples.
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WORKING CLASS
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Next his wife was auctioned o ¤ amidst cattle and horses. An auctioneer prefaced the bidding by extolling the virtues of the wife on the block.
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BESTIE
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The wife sale terminated one marriage and began another. To formalize such sales, the parties involved sometimes procured the services of a lawyer
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MATRIMONIO
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“in many instances the wife appears to have been retained because she did not like her purchaser”( Menefee 1981: 109).
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VETO
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The necessity of wives’consent to be sold to new husbands explains the happiness many wives displayed at their sales’ conclusion.
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FELICITÀ
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For example, one couple decided that they should resort to a wife sale “hav[ ing] lately lived together on unpleasant terms, in consequence of the wife having a strong ‘a ¢ nity’ for a man on the opposite side of the street” (The Illustrated Police News, November 19, 1870).
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AMANTE COMPRASTORE
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The frequent existence of a ready and likely high bidder— a wife’ s lover— explains why some wife sales were transacted without auctions
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SENZ ASTA
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In other cases wives’winning bidders weren’t men seeking new mates at all. They were wives’family members,
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AFAMILY MEMBERS
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while the law did not consider divorces or marriages achieved through wife sales legitimate, several jurists expressed confusion about whether wife selling per se was prohibited.
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CONFUSIOONE LEGISLATIVA
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it was founded on a custom preserved by the people, a custom, perhaps, that it would even be dangerous to pass a law which abolished it”
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CONSUETUDINE
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Religious authorities’attitudes toward wife sales were equally confused. Some religious authorities condemned wife selling. But others seemed to condone it, if not in word, in practice.
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RELIGIOSIVGONFUSI
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4 Predictions and Evidence
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1. Wife-sale prices are positive.
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PRIMA PREVISIONE CONFRRMATA
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Between 1735 and 1899 the mean wife in our sample sold for £ 5.72, though prices vary signi… cantly by decade. In every decade, however, both mean and median wife prices are positive.
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EVIDENZW
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2. Wife sales decline when English law grants wives property rights.
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CONDA PREVISIONE
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This new legal environment greatly diminished the importance of wife sales as means for unhappy wives to purchase the right to exit their ine ¢ cient marriages from their husbands indirectly. In consequence, wife sales declined precipitously.
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CONFERMA
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Although wife sales didn’ t become exceptional until the turn of the 20th century, their usage may have begun to go into decline some 17 years before the…rst English legal change granting wives some property
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5 Concluding Remarks
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