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CLASSIC: English Men Used to Sell Their Wives · Ridiculous History

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