Wife selling (English custom)

Wife selling in England was a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage that probably began at the end of the 17th century, when divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest. Although less than 400 cases of wife sales have been recorded, historians note that there were roughly as many wife sales as there were divorces by private acts of Parliament in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Source: Wikipedia — Wife selling (English custom) (CC BY-SA 4.0)