Latest / Ridiculous History / English Men Used to Sell Their Wives

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English Men Used to Sell Their Wives · Ridiculous History

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've often thought that every single romantic relationship is
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: like a country all its own, with its own unique rules,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: its own unique social morays, and so on, and everybody
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: else is, to some degree or another, an outsider. But
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: whenever we talk about relationships in general, we run into
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: some strange, complicated and ridiculous things. Hi, I'm Ben, Hey Ben,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I was confused that where am I today?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: It's been one of those. Um. I'm really fond of
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: that expression. Think it's a good way of looking at it,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: because it's like it's sort of like the whole idea
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of we're all protagonists in our own story. Another expression,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: you enjoy thank you? Yeah, I do. I do enjoy it. Um,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and I enjoy hanging out on this show ridiculous history.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: That's right. I'm having one of those days too. That's
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: what we're doing. That's what we're doing. We're we're here
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: for that reason, right, are here for that reason? Oh great?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: That means that our super producer, Casey Pegram is also here. Casey,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna lean back and wave at you. He really did.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I gotta thumbs up. So the three of us are
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: people who have had our ups and downs and love
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: without getting too personal. Now we're not in cells or anything,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but you know, the course of true love never did
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: run smooth as other people who want to say. And
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: today's episode is about the end of some romantic relationships.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It's about the end of marriages, but not in the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: typical way. Not a marriage that ended in divorce, not
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a marriage that ended in death, not even a marriage
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that ended in an nullment. We're talking about something very
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: strange today and it takes us all the way back
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to merry old England. That's right, Ben. Between seventeen eighty
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and around eighteen fifty, there was a pretty fascinating and
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: bizarre practice that had gained popularity out of necessity, really
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: weirdly in England. Um. It was the practice of selling wives.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Wife selling, Yeah, and that's it's it's not euphemism for anything,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and that's literally what it was. That's exactly what it
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: sounds like. The BuzzFeed headline would be an englishmen sell
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: their wives. But there's more to this story and it's not.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It's not the same kind of perhaps human trafficking or
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: chattel slavery that you might associate with quote unquote selling
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a person. So let's journey back to the seventeen fifties. Say,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and you're an average you're an average household, you're not aristocratic.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're working class alas or lower working class, and
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: you run into irreconcilable differences and you as maybe both
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of you decide amicably that your marriage should your marriage
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: should end, you should dissolve it. Then you start looking
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: into the process of dissolving your marriage, and you quickly
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: learn some really depressing, difficult stuff. Yeah, there's depressing stuff
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: on both sides of the equation. For women of this time,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: one of the most depressing factors was that they had
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: no property rights. They were basically considered Not only do
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: they have no property rights themselves, they themselves were basically
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: considered the property of their husband. And uh they had
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: no recourse if the husband wanted to and all the marriage,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: they themselves could not choose to when all the marriage
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: was entirely up to the husband to make this decision.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Even worse, and this is something that was bad for
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the husband, it was incredibly expensive because there was no
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: such thing as a divorce. The first divorce didn't even
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: come around until eighteen fifty seven. So the only way
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to get separated legally was to get a private Act
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: of Parliament and then have it be blessed by the church.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And that private act of Parliament did not come cheap.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It did not. And let's step back here for a second,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: because divorces could occur, but there were something that was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: essentially relegated to the higher class of people in society
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: at the time. Obtaining a private Act of Parliament would
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: cost around three thousand pounds, and that cost did not
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: That cost was essentially uh a note of exception to
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Britain's otherwise very very strict law about divorce. And it's
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: still just got you halfway through the game, because if
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the church didn't want to give their blessing, then you
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: were s o l straight out of luck. Since this
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: is a family show. This was expensive, This took a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: long time, and people eventually had to find some sort
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: of alternative plan. Also, three thousand pounds for that act
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of parliament, that is about if we run it through
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the inflation calculator, that's about fifteen thousand pounds in our
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: modern age. Yeah, yeah, And that three thousand pounds is
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: just the bottom, the scraping the bottom, right, It could
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: easily become a higher fee three thousand, five hundred or so.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: What factors do you think would have led to any
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: fluctuation in the price? Nepotism? I mean I think so. Yeah,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're a let's say you are a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: member of parliament, you're a lord an aristocrat of some sort,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: then you have the funding to get this act passed through.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: But it may have been a quid pro quote thing.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: It may have been when a mutual backscratching arrangement, right,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and so maybe if there wasn't some favor that you
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: could grant in addition to being able to pay this
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: three thousand pounds, maybe they would up the price and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: they say, oh, for you, buddy, it's four thousand, five
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: hundred or something like that. So there wasn't a strict
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: schedule that decided what people would pay exactly. And this
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: was an annulment, right, The average person could not afford
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: an annulment. And again, as we pointed out, these decisions
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: were primarily made by the dudes at the time. So
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: instead the husband would do something that sounds very strange
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and disturbing. He would take his spouse to the local
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: marketplace or even a cattle auction, a livestock auction. Then
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: he would register his wife as property to be sold,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and symbolically a rope would be placed somewhere around her body. Right,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was this just like for the symbolism, Like, I don't
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: understand what the function of this rope was, is that
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: it feels some boling, It feels symbolic. It would be
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: around the person's neck, their waste, or their wrist, and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: then they would have to go stand up on an
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: auction block while people bid on this human being. Because
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: let's be real, I mean, if anything, maybe correct me
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: if if I'm not thinking about this their away. This
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: is sort of a loophole. They're trying to figure out
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a semi legal way of doing this thing, of ridding
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: themselves of this unwanted property. Yes, yes, spot on, You're
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: absolutely right, because at this time these people might not
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: have any recourse and maybe both the wife and the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: husband wish to part ways. They may be cooperating in
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: this regard. This is an illegal practice, is definitely a loophole,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: but the authorities, many of whom probably could not afford
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and a divorce themselves, would turn a blind eye to it.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: It would get ignored the way that some other minor
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: infractions are ignored in society today, like jaywalking, for you're
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: rarely going to get busted for that. Did you know
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: that the term jaywalking was conspiracy. Yeah, it was like
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it was trumped up as a term of abuse for pedestrians. Yep,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that's that's exactly true, because this was during the propagation
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: of automobiles. Yeah, we have a car stuff episode on it.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: There's a really I remember that, and there's a really
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: great Adam Ruins Everything episode about just how cars are
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: actually quite terrible and you know, infrastructure that's based around
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: driving is really just not very functional at all. In
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: YadA YadA, YadA. Oh, I've got another one while we're
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: on the tangent. Litter Bug is another hit piece. It
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: was created to take the focus away from the amount
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of waste that goods manufacturers create and put the focus
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: on people. So it's your job to take care of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the waste. Brilliant Marcavellian stuff. Total bait and switch or
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: kind of like a sleight of hand, kind of moved
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: misdirection the press. The digitation man nailed that pronunciation. Man,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: that's a dunk twister. We practiced that off air makes
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you editing that part out casey, But we're right, you
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: know that this this is a loophole. People are turning
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a blind eye to it, and at times the description
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of it seems almost jovial, you know, because what did
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: they do after they made this sale? They drank, They
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: went to a bar. Yeah. Party. What's interesting about this, though, Ben,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: is that there's something else going on beneath the surface,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: because on first glance, this entire charade just seems just
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: grossly misogynistic, and of course it is, but there's an
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: aspect that we haven't talked about yet. The woman actually
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: had like a veto vote over who she went with,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: and she was likely just as ready to get out
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: of this marriage as the husband was to be rid
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: of her. And this was, in a weird way, gave
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: her the ability to kind of control her destiny much
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: more than she would in an element where she was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: just you know, thrown out of the street with no
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: property right. And we have found specific instances, documented occurrences
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: of this happening. It's not a rumor. There's a great
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: article from the Review of Behavioral Economics called wife Sales
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: by Peter T. Leeson and a few other authors, and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: they describe in no uncertain terms, specific situations where this occurs.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: There was a gentleman named Moses Mag's who we have
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a quote from, in the course of attempting to sell
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: his wife. And I'm not going to do a voice,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: but it's written. It's written in that way, that kind
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of condescending way that authors of yesteryear would write whenever
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: they thought someone had a lower class accent, you know.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of weird apostrophes, a lot of
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: misspelled words. But here it goes, ladies and gentlemen, I
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: acts laughed to oppose your notice. Her is a good
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: creature and goes pretty well in harness with a little flogging.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Her can carry a hundred and a half of coals
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: from the pit for three good miles. Her can sell
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: it well and put it down her throat in lessner
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: three minutes. Now, my lads roll up and bid spirited.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I bought her through the turnpike and paid the mon
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the toll for her. I brought her with a halter
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and had her cried. Now, gentlemen, who bids going, go
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and go? And I can't delay, As the auctioneer says,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I can't dwell on this lot. Come say, six shillings
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you're talking about right man? One would think nol. This
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: is Moses mag selling his wife. She consented to be sold.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: When they finished the transaction, she was sold for six
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: shillings and three gallons of ale. Was that part though,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: about putting her in some sort of harness A halter? Yeah,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I don't understand. You're gonna have to help dissect this
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: one for me a little bit. Then there's something about
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: coal carrying loads. It was talking about what that guy
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: saw as the skills of his former spouse. And now,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: and there's a bit of a puzzle here, according to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: these authors, because this sale of someone's spouse resulted in
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the de facto dissolution of a marriage. Because the dejore
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the legal way was very, very difficult, but it wasn't
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the only de facto way to dissolve a marriage. You
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: could have a judicial separation, or you could privately say, look,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: no one has the time or money for a divorce,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: but let's just go live separately, you know what I mean.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: You could do those things. So it's it's a bit
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: confusing for us to understand how this practice of selling
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: someone in a public space became not commonplace, but became
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a real thing. Yeah, And I was trying to kind
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of get to a point about how this sort of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: afforded the wife a bit more control than she would
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: have had otherwise by consenting, Like you said, she consented
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: to be sold, even though that a bit more agency, Yeah,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: a little bit more agency. And in this article from
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Motherboard by Ben Richmond called why wife selling was advantageous
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: for wives, that cites that same paper by Peter Leason
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that you were talking about, and he makes the point
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that in the records of the Nearing Nearing around three
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: hundred wives that were sold between seventeen eighty and eighteen fifty,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: all signs point to almost every single one of them
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: being consensual or the wife being all for it. Yeah,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And there's a there's a great point of Gladi Bree
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of this article, because there's there's a great part of
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: there where they talk about how the concept of marriage
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: has evolved. You know, in twenty nineteen. Most of the time,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: when we think of people marrying, at least in the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Western world, we think of people marrying because they have
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: genuine affection for one another, They like each other. Right. However,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. That's that's relatively recent. Until about
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: two hundred years ago, marriage was thought of as much
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: more of a transactional economic relationship. So Justin E. H. Smith,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: in an essay for Lapham's Quarterly, has the following quote
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: describing how marriage had been for the bulk of human history.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Marriage was for most of human history a variety of exchange,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: one that consolidated social ties between families or clans. And
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like that conversation we've had before about
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: why people had so many more children than they do now,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: at least in in Europe and in the US. It's
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: because you would have children as free labor and then
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: as health insurance when you're elderly, they would take care
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: of you. Yeah. And if that, what is that, like
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: a Craigslist post sounding ad for that wife that was
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: up for sale, is any indication I think wives were
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: probably treated as slave labor. A bit too terrible, you know.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Um in the in the Motherboard article,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Lison goes on to point out something that I hadn't
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: even considered. Who are the ones that are in the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: market for these as he refers to them, used wives
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: or unhappy wives. Exactly who it's It's a couple of
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: different possibilities. It could be folks who have just not
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: have been unlucky in love, you know, and just haven't
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: done very well in the traditional kind of marriage marketplace.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: It could be uh, folks acting on behalf of wealthy
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: individuals who are just on the lookout for maybe maybe
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: they're like wealthy you know, widowers or something like that
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: looking for a new wife. Or it could actually be
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the families of the wives themselves. I see. Yeah. Essentially,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the economic argument here is that wife sales permitted unhappy
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: women to trade a marriage that they didn't particularly care
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: for with a marriage that they valued more. So. This
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: seems like an improvised system that was organically created to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: get around the laws of the time. It is still
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: it's always going to be a little bit puzzling, because
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: there were other avenues for de facto divorce. But Lisa
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in his team found that wife sales benefited wives rather
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: than harmed them, and they argue that without this institution,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: at least some unhappy spouses in industrial revolutionary England would
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: have remained trapped in in efficient marriages that they wanted
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to exit. I'm laughing at the phrase inefficient because it's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: weird to hear economists des marriage. They weigh in on
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: it in the following perspective. The way that we think
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: of marriage from an economic perspective is to think about
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: how much each of the spouse's value being in the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: marriage relative to one another and relative to living outside
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the marriage. So it makes sense to me that an
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: economist would look at this from a value based, transactional
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: perspective rather than like the love, the you know, the romance,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the sticking together for the kids, all the things that
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: are so common today. Right, it seems that we are
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: in a very privileged position where we have more agency
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in our own relationships. Regardless of who you are and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: how you identify. The truth of the matter is that
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: you can marry people because you like them now instead
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: of needing to you know, end the blood feud between
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: your clans, or to get a dowry and so on.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: What even as a dowry, it's the it's the payoff
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that the bride's family gives to the group. So it's
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: just a cash cash offering. Basically, I think it could
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: be it could be a bartering thing. It could be property. Uh,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: it's it's brought like you marry, you agree to marry someone,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: at least traditionally, and then the bride comes with maybe
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: it's uh maybe it's land, right, maybe it's livestock, maybe
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it's just straight up cash. But you know, loophole this
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: thing was. It really started to kind of lose its luster,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and husbands who were trying to sell their wives kind
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: of became a little bit looked at a social pariah's
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and it just wasn't done, you know what I mean. Um,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: So the practice kind of went away, But apparently the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Vintage News writes that they found a case as recently
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: as nineteen thirteen when a woman um said that her
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: husband sold her to one of his work buddies for
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: one pound. So that's obviously an outlier, but yeah, what
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: an interesting practice, and the whole idea that it was
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: somehow better than the alternative, uh for for women. But yes,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So the decline of wife sales largely coincided with the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: rise of more equal property rights and the ease of
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: getting a legitimate or de jure divorce. Uh. Also, the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: speeches from these people who are attempting to sell their
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: sell their spouses are are so strange. For instance, there's
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: one guy in eighteen thirty two, I just want to
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: list this off. He lists his spouses bad and good
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: qualities as he saw them. He called her a born
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: serpent and advised prospective buyers to avoid frolicsome women as
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: you would a mad dog, a roaring lion, a loaded
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: pistol cholera. Then he listed her assets, which included the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: ability to milk cows, uh, the ability to sing well,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and to be a great drinking companion. And apparently they
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: were still friends afterward, which is to me just the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: strangest thing. And uh, you know, if you are listening
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and you are married, or you have been married, or
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you are engaged, congratulations, I absolutely wish you the best. Please, please, please,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: whatever you do, don't try to sell your spouse. Just
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: don't do it. It's so weird. It's a bad look.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: It's not a good look. Yeah. It's poor, poor form,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: very poor form. And thankfully, in this day and age,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it is illegal. Yeah. I mean it was illegal back then,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: but the authorities seemed perfectly willing to throw to turn
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: a blind eye to it. Certainly would not be the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: case today. I think this would be highly frowned upon
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: um and you probably wouldn't be able to get away
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: with human trafficking. That's what that's the word. That's the word.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: We hope that you enjoyed today's episode, and as always,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: we would love to hear h some of your takes,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: your feedback, or your understanding of similar situations if some
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: occurred in your neck of the Global Woods. You can
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: find us on Instagram. You find us on Facebook. You
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: can speak with your fellow ridiculous historians on our Facebook
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: page Ridiculous Historians. Yeah, if you want to check out
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: me and my various adventures around town with my weird
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: ten year old, you can check me out at Embryonic
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Inside on Instagram. And I believe when this episode comes out,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I'll either have just returned or be on the way
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: to the d MZ. So if you want to see
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: some pictures of that, follow me on at Ben Bowland
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: at Instagram. Thank you, super producer, Casey Pegraham. Thanks to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: our research associate, Eve's Jeff Coe, who we really should
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: have on the show at some point. She's got some
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: really cool stuff browing. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the theme, and thanks to you, Ben Bolland for being
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a pal and in a cohort. Likewise, no thank you,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and luckily I did not find a comic book that
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I'm pertained to today's topic that was worth recommending, which
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I think is a good sign for society overall. Agreed,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: See you next time, folks,