Wife Sales existed – and thanks to Channel 4 – is still going strong

The other night, while watching Married at First Sight, I felt an unexpected jolt of recognition. I’ve just published a novel, The Bride Stone, in which a wife sale is pivotal to the story. That cruel custom where a woman, often with a halter around her neck, was led to market and sold like cattle. It persisted in Britain until as late as the 1930s. I thought it had been safely buried in the past. And yet, in the glossy spectacle of reality television, I suddenly glimpsed its shadow.

Reality shows such as Love Is Blind, The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, and 90 Day Fiancé UK cloak themselves in the language of “social experiment.” But their structure is disconcertingly familiar. Men and women are displayed, judged, matched, and rejected under the watchful eyes of strangers. Contracts are signed, ultimatums issued, futures staked not on quiet intimacy but on performance.

This was not unlike wife sales of earlier centuries. Then, as now, women (and now men) had to appear willing consenting to the “transaction” in some form. In truth, of course, that consent was heavily shaped by circumstance. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a wife might submit to being auctioned not because she desired it, but because it offered her a fragile route out of a miserable marriage. Divorce was nearly impossible for ordinary people until 1857, when the first civil divorce law was passed, and even then, it remained costly and scandalous. A public sale was often the only “escape clause.”

What shocks modern readers is how brazenly these sales were staged. Contemporary reports describe crowds gathering, auctioneers announcing the “lot,” and a halter around the woman’s neck to signify she was property. The church disapproved, and the law never formally recognised the practice, yet local communities often turned a blind eye. It persisted because women were regarded legally and socially as chattels—movable property to be transferred, much like a cow, a pig, or a horse.

Now fast-forward to today’s television. The difference, of course, is scale. Where once perhaps a few dozen villagers would turn out to witness a wife sold in a marketplace, millions now watch a woman on Married at First Sight declare that she doesn’t fancy her husband. When the presenter scolded her for disrespect, what struck me was how she seemed more distressed about the audience’s judgment than the feelings of the man she had just married. Then and now, performance for the crowd carries as much weight as the private bond itself.

What we rarely acknowledge is how little of this history is taught. Most people are astonished to learn that wife sales ever happened in England, let alone that they endured well into the 20th century. Without that context, it’s easy to treat today’s “social experiments” as new inventions, when in fact they are echoes of long-standing practices that tie love to transaction, intimacy to spectacle.

In some ways, the modern twist is that men are now equally “on the block.” Everyone declares they are ready to settle down, searching for Mr. or Mrs. Forever. But the pull of fame is never far away. Just as a wife sale once drew a crowd to gawp, these shows rely on the lure of mass voyeurism. The camera becomes the third partner in every relationship, distorting expectations, magnifying drama, and rewarding display. One wonders how many of these couples survive once the costumes are returned, the cameras packed away, and the “marketplace” disappears.

History offers its own warnings. The French Revolution briefly ignited radical ideas: that women should own property, choose their partners, and even divorce. For a fleeting moment, equality seemed within reach. But those ambitions were swiftly suppressed, and women remained tethered to laws and customs that treated them as commodities. The resonance with today’s reality-show marriages is uncomfortable: the language may have changed, but the commodification persists.

In The Bride Stone, the stone itself—made to look like an emerald—endures as a silent witness to the price once placed on a wife. That question reverberates across centuries: is marriage an intimate partnership, or a commodity to be displayed, traded, and discarded?

Television hasn’t created this problem so much as revealed it. From dowries to divorce settlements, from auction blocks to reality-show ultimatums, love has long been entangled with commerce. The unsettling realisation is that the marketplace never disappeared—it simply changed form. Perhaps we, the audience, are its newest witnesses: complicit in the repackaging of an ancient tradition.

Here we are in 2025. In our eagerness to be entertained, we carry its legacy with us into the 21st century. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next big Channel 4 format turned out to be The Wife Sale. Legally more complicated, of course—but not, I fear, unthinkable