Category Archives: Marriage

1691: Amusingly-shaped vegetable proves wife not impotent

In 1691, Joseph de Arostegui of Calahorra from northern Spain petitioned for divorce from his wife, Antonia Garrido, based on her alleged impotence. According to his testimony, there had been no consummation of their four-year marriage because his wife “does not have her parts like other women”.

Antonia contested her husband’s claim for divorce, her lawyer asserting that Antonia’s genitals were fully functional but had been affected by “evil spells and witchcraft”.

As was usual in early modern trials where impotence was alleged, Antonia was ordered to submit to at least two examinations by doctors and midwives. At the second of these examinations:

“…the [surgeon] Francisco Velez inserted into the said parts of the said Antonia Garrido a stem of cabbage in a shape similar to a virile member… and seeing that it entered with liberty…”

The examiners, content that penetration had been achieved, ruled that Antonia was capable of intercourse, and the church court turned down Joseph’s petition for divorce. The fate of their marriage after this is unknown.

Source: Testimony of Dr Juan Munoz, Archives of the Diocese of Calahorra, folio 1. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1598: Cheese shortens your “gear”, says adulterous wife

In 1598 a Hounsditch woman, Margaret Browne, appeared at Bridewell Court to give evidence against her neighbour. Browne and her husband lived next door to John Underhill, a local bookbinder, and his wife Clement.

According to Browne’s testimony, Mr Underhill left town on business on May 13th. Around lunchtime, Clement Underhill received a male caller, a man named Michael Fludd. Mrs Browne, apparently a pioneer of the Neighbourhood Watch movement, followed events through windows and gaps in the walls. She saw and overheard a salacious exchange in the Underhills’ kitchen:

“As they were eating their victuals, Underhill’s wife said unto Fludd these words: “Eat no more cheese, for that it will make your gear short, and I mean to have a good turn of you soon.”

After lunch, Fludd retired upstairs to the Underhills’ bedroom, where he remained while Mrs Underhill attended their store. At six o’clock she joined him in the bedchamber, where Fludd:

“…took her in his arms and brought her to the bed’s foot and took up her clothes… She put her hand into his hose and he kissed her and pulled her upon him… He plucked up her clothes to her thighs, she plucked them up higher, whereby [Mrs Browne] saw not only her hose, being seawater green colour, and also her bare thighs.”

After nature had taken its course, Fludd “wiped his yard on her smock”, then Underhill “departed from him to fetch a pot of beer”. They then shared some bread and drink, with Mrs Underhill reportedly toasting Fludd’s performance in bed. Browne’s husband, who arrived home in time to witness the fornication next door, supported his wife’s testimony.

Confronted with this evidence, Fludd confessed to having “carnal knowledge of the body of the said Clement Underhill”. Despite the graphic nature of Mrs Browne’s testimony, Fludd was treated leniently: he was ordered to pay 20 shillings to the Bridewell hospital. Mrs Underhill was not arraigned and escaped without penalty from the court, though she did not escape public humiliation.

Source: Bridewell Court Minute Book 1598-1604, May 1598, f.23. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.400AD: Bottle your sperm with a lizard for marital fidelity

Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) was an American journalist and folklorist who spent much of his life travelling and investigating different cultures, both ancient and modern. In the early 1890s Leland spent time in Italy, where he visited Roman and Etruscan ruins and researched remnant cultural practices. While in Tuscany Leland uncovered a spell for marital fidelity, apparently recorded by Marcellus Burdigalensis, a physician to the Emperor Honorius:

“When a man wishes his wife to be faithful, he should take his sperm, sprinkled, and put it in a bottle… then catch a lizard with the left hand and put it in the same bottle. Cork them up very tightly and say:

Qui racchiudo la fedelta di mia moglie che non possa mai sfugirmi!

(Here I put the fidelity of my wife, that she may be ever and ever true to me.)

Be careful not to lose the bottle; you should always keep it in the house.”

Source: Cited in Charles G. Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains, 1892. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1897: Bill Gates offers tin of gold dust for teen wife

bill gates
A pen drawing of Bill Gates, the womanising Yukon version

Bill Gates, popularly known as ‘Swiftwater Bill’, was an Idaho-born pioneer and miner. Around 1896 Gates left his job as a dishwasher and joined the Klondike gold rush in remote western Canada. Gates purchased a claim along the Yukon River and chanced upon one of the richest deposits in the Klondike.

For a while, Gates was reportedly cashing in more than $10,000 of gold each week, making him one of the Yukon’s most successful prospectors. But Gates also spent money as fast as he made it: he was a notorious spendthrift, fond of fancy clothes, high living and gambling. He was also a ladies’ man – in the goldfields, something that could prove quite an expensive hobby:

“As a matrimonial market Dawson City [in the Yukon] has no equal on earth. Ladies are as scarce as gold dust… Any maiden, innocent or full of guile, can become a bride with a wedding present of thousands of dollars of gold dust within 30 minutes after arriving at Dawson City, if she will but whisper her consent.”

Bill Gates was particularly infatuated with the teenage girls employed as dancers and waitresses in Dawson. According to legend one of Gates’ favourite dancers was fond of eggs – a scarce commodity in the Yukon – so he bought up every egg in Dawson at a dollar apiece.

The main object of Gates’ affection was 19-year-old Gussie Lamore. In 1897, he tried securing her hand in marriage by giving Gussie her own weight in gold:

“…Bill was so smitten with her charms that he called on Miss LaMore the day of her arrival and wooed her with $50,000 of gold dust in a coal oil can.”

Bill and Gussie never married (some reports suggest she already had a husband). Gates continued to chase teenage girls, including Gussie’s younger sister Grace, Bera Beebe (whom he eventually married) and 17-year-old Kitty Brandon. His antics later led to a bigamy charge, though Gates managed to avoid trial, possibly with bribes.

In his lifetime, Bill Gates dug up and squandered at least four different fortunes. He was mining a large silver deposit in Peru when he died in 1935.

Source; The San Francisco Call, August 26th 1897. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1915: Housewives should be too busy for suicide, says judge

In 1915, a Philadelphia woman appeared in court charged with attempting suicide. The judge discharged Margaret Reeves without penalty – but not before giving her a stern talking to:

“A woman with a husband, a family and a home should be too busy to think about suicide,” was the gist of the lecture that Magistrate Harris gave to Mrs Reeves, of 87th Street and Laycock Avenue. Early in the week she attempted to end her life. She is the fifth wife of James Reeves, 65 years old, a mail clerk on the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

Source: The Washington Herald, August 9th 1915. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1872: Son-in-law testicle inspection a must, says Bertillon

After qualifying as a doctor, Jacques Bertillon (1851-1922) chose not to practice medicine, going instead into statistical analysis and demographic research. Bertillon was also an active writer, contributing articles to medical and sociological journals.

In 1872, a French medical guide published an essay on marriage written by Bertillon. Despite his inexperience (the author was still shy of his 21st birthday), Bertillon preached instructions and advice for newlyweds and their families.

The fathers of young ladies, urged Bertillon, should carefully but discretely evaluate the manhood of any prospective son-in-law. If a suitor showed any “doubtful traits of virility” – such as “a voice that is pitched high or often breaks”, “a thin, patchy or wispy beard” or any feminine traits – then the future father-in-law, as a condition of marriage, should drag him off to a doctor:

“…Have the physician inspect the testicular sac, to affirm the presence of testicles, whether there be two or one… and whether one or both be shrunken and flaccid… The so-called man who seeks a wife may be capable of erection or carnal lust, but may not possess true virility or fertile embraces. He is a being who, if he possesses any sense or tact… should remain a stranger to the matrimonial state.”

Source: Jacques Bertillon, “Mariage” in Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales, v.5 n.67, 1872. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1939: Wife-slapping legal if you don’t kill her, says judge

The issue of whether or not husbands had the right to slap, spank or beat their wives befuddled American judges for much of the early 20th century. A sizeable majority of judges were opposed to domestic violence and dealt with it sternly. There are even two recorded cases of judges leaping the bench and assaulting wife-beaters themselves.

But there were also some notable dissenters. In 1939, a Chicago woman named Mary Kuhar petitioned for divorce from her husband John, a dance band drummer, on the grounds that he often slapped her. But unfortunately, she struck an unsympathetic judge, Philip J. Finnegan of the Circuit Court:

“Judge Finnegan… said it [wife-slapping] wasn’t just legal but also more or less a husband’s marital duty…

‘Under the law’, said Judge Finnegan, ‘cruelty must consist of violence great enough to endanger life. A slap does not endanger life. A man may slap his wife as hard as he wants to, if he doesn’t kill her. If more wives were slapped there would be fewer divorces.’

The judge threw out Mrs Kuhar’s claim, with a warning that “better evidence of cruelty must be presented” for him to grant divorces in the future.

Source: The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg), February 1st 1939. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1911: Man has wife, 15, locked up – for acting like a child

In 1911, Charles H. Daly petitioned a Washington DC court, seeking to have his wife Edith institutionalised. According to Daly he married Edith in Rockville, Maryland about two years before. Since then she had conducted herself very poorly, “making faces” and being “impudent to her elders”. Attempts to restrain and discipline her had failed.

In short, Edith was behaving like a child – not unsurprisingly, since she was 15 years old:

“He has been unable to control his wife. So he haled her, gold wedding ring, marriage vows and all, before Judge De Lacy… a few days ago, and charged her with being incorrigible.”

The judge approved Charles Daly’s request and sent Edith to the House of the Good Shepherd, a reformatory for girls and young women in Burleith.

Source: Washington Times, January 19th 1911. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1839: Lincolnshire tailor sells wife for “a tub of turnips”

An amusing though unsubstantiated story from rural Lincolnshire concerns a tailor from the village of Owston Ferry, north of Gainsborough. According to press reports from 1839 the tailor, Kellett, was in nearby Epworth on business when he went on a bender and:

“…sold his wife to a saddler of that place, for a tub (twelve pecks) of Swede turnips… One huge turnip was given as deposit to make good the bargain.”

The drunken tailor may have forgotten the arrangement or not taken it seriously. The Epworth saddler, however, had different ideas. He organised for the balance of the turnips to be delivered to Kellett’s home in Owston Ferry. But delivery of the turnips was taken by the tailor’s wife, who had not been informed of the deal and certainly did not approve:

“..Having heard of the whole transaction, and not liking to be disposed of in such a manner, [she] fell on the poor unfortunate tailor and did beat him about the head with the turnips, then turned him out of the house.”

Source: The Lincoln Gazette, February 21st 1839. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.