Picture the Scene. It’s 31st May 1782, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. An agreement drawn up that day records a transaction between John Chappell of Ossett and John Harford of Nether Shitlington, a village whose name already suggests things are about to go downhill (you couldn’t make it up, could you?). The subject of the agreement? To sell Chappell’s wife, Barbery, to John Harford for the sum of three guineas. The document is signed by all three parties, because the likelihood is that Barbery is already Harford’s mistress and is happy to get out of her marriage...