A Regency Era Sapphic Schoolteacher Scandal

Vulgar History Podcast

A Regency Era Sapphic Schoolteacher Scandal

January 21, 2026

Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this season we are in our Regency Era. We’re talking about stuff that was happening in mostly England, but today we’re talking about Scotland, we talk about some other places. We’re talking about the early 1800s; we’re talking about Bridgerton era; we’re talking about Jane Austen era, like, that time when people were wearing the Empire waistline dresses and going to balls and things like that, or that’s kind of what we think about in the popular imagination. 

Today’s topic, we’re talking about more working-class people. I don’t think there’s any balls involved in this episode. Today, we’re actually talking about what happened in this era in Edinburgh in Scotland. My guest is Indigo Dunphy-Smith, who is a researcher and writer based in Edinburgh. She specializes in research and events that create space for marginalized stories in traditional spaces. She’s the author of How to: Queer Your Historic House, a practical toolkit for telling queer stories in historic places. From castles to convict barracks, Indigo has over eight years of experience working in the heritage sector across Australia and Scotland. She supports organizations like the National Library of Scotland, the National Gallery of Scotland, and Sydney Living Museums to queer their heritage spaces and collections. A selection of her work can be found on her socials and website, A Queer Was Here. Indigo regularly delivers talks to workshops on uncovering queer links in historic houses and has appeared on the podcast Bad Gays, and now on the podcast Vulgar History. She also co-chairs the National Trust for Scotland’s LGBTQ network. 

And actually, Indigo is the one who contacted me to suggest this story, which I had vaguely heard of before, because what we’re talking about, it’s not— Well, it’s kind of a group of people. It’s a scenario. It’s the first maybe time we’ve talked about, on this podcast, a scenario rather than a person. It’s Woods and Pirie v. Cumming Gordon, is the name of the ultimate court trial that happens. But what happens is it’s two women who are running a school together, and one of their students accuses them of being lesbians in Regency era Edinburgh, and all of the fallout of that and all that happens. It actually, this story inspired a movie that you might have heard of called The Children’s Hour, starring Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn. 

We’ve had some other sapphic stories so far on this Regency Era season; we’ve talked about the Ladies of Llangollen, we talked about Anne Lister. All of those stories kind of have happy endings for the sapphic couples. This one is a much more complex situation. So, I’ll just say that there is homophobia in this episode, there’s also some anti-Indian racism in this episode, there’s some alleged sexual assault in this episode. So, listeners beware, or whatever. But please, I hope you will enjoy this episode and this really fascinating story and my chat with Indigo. 

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Ann: So, I’m joined today by Indigo Dunphy-Smith. Welcome, Indigo. 

Indigo: Hi, thanks for having me. 

Ann: I’m really intrigued to talk to you about this story for lots of reasons, but one of them is because it takes place in Regency era Edinburgh, and we haven’t talked about what was happening in Scotland at this point in time. Can you give us sort of a lay of the land? What’s it like in Edinburgh in 1811? 

Indigo: Edinburgh is kind of divided between two towns; you have the Old Town, which is kind of like a medieval city that’s got lots of crooked closes or wynds, as you call them, and everyone’s kind of piled on top of each other. You’re in these, like, medieval high-rise, stone buildings, and you’ve got the Edinburgh Castle at the top of this… I think it’s like an ancient volcanic plug, and then you’ve got the Royal Mile that runs all the way down to the bottom, which has got Holyrood Palace and this big kind of parkland. So, that’s the Old Town. 

And then, you’ve got the New Town, which is in development at the time, and it’s all about kind of Enlightenment theory of order and reason. So, you’ve got sprawling streets and Georgian architecture, so neoclassical design with lots of big windows and columns and things like that. It’s meant to be… At this time, it’s kind of like the expensive new development. So, if you had a lot of money, you could leave the Old Town with everyone living in close quarters behind, and you could move over to the New Town and have a lovely six-story townhouse, and not have to smell everyone kind of putting their waste out the window, I guess. [laughs]

Ann: It’s interesting. I’ve been to Edinburgh, and it’s like a compact city; it’s such an old city. So, it’s just like, you’ve got the Old Town and the New Town, and they’re just squished up against each other, I would imagine. 

Indigo: They really are, they are. And they’re only divided by, I think in 1811, they would have been in the process of draining what was a loch that ran through the center of the city, dividing the two parts of the town. This loch had just become a kind of… Where everyone threw their rubbish, and it smelt, and you just kind of had to walk around it to get between the Old Town and the New Town. They did build some bridges, and then slowly they started to drain it, and it’s now being replaced with the main train station that runs through Edinburgh, and beautiful Princes Street Gardens. So, it’s a much nicer place now. 

Ann: I’m just picturing, you’ve described it very evocatively, there’s a lot of smells going on in Edinburgh, 1811. [both laugh] So, in the midst of this, I just want to set our scene, because we’re focusing really on just kind of this one drama that happens there in that time. So, two women open a girls’ school. We’ll talk about who they are in a minute, but where, in this context, where did they set up this school? 

Indigo: So, the teachers set up the school in the New Town. They set it up in a particular part of the New Town that is still in development, around the West End and a place called Charlotte Square, and they set it up kind of like on the edge of the New Town. The wealthy families have moved into the area, but they’re kind of newly established there, so it’s a good time to establish a school for all of the young ladies who might need a, kind of, proper education or, like, a finishing school. 

Ann: And so, it’s interesting, just when I was reading up on this before talking to you… So, the two women are opening a school, and it reminds me a bit about Mary Wollstonecraft and her friend opened a school. So, it’s not unheard of to be sort of a way that two women who are friends or relatives could start a business in this era, where there’s not a lot of options for, like, what job are you going to have? 

So, explain who the two women are— Actually, explain who the two women are, but like how they met each other, these two women who opened the school. 

Indigo: So, the two women are Marianne Woods, who is originally from London, but she comes up to Edinburgh when she’s a child, I think, because her parents die and she comes to live with her uncle and aunt, who are retired stage performers in Edinburgh. So, that is Marianne Woods, and the other school teacher is Jane Pirie, and Jane Pirie grows up in Edinburgh’s Old Town. These are two women who are middle class, and the best way for them to make it in life or to have a comfortable life is to become governesses. And so, they actually meet in an art class and become kind of really good friends, really, really fast. 

Ann: This is, I mean, we’re going to get into this… What was their relationship exactly, but they are historically very good friends, [Indigo laughs] as we say. But this is an era, like, we saw this also in Mary Wollstonecraft’s story, for instance, where there’s this romantic, I would say passionate, female friendship. This is not unheard of for two women to become extremely close and to write very flowery letters to each other. This doesn’t necessarily mean that these women are lovers. It could mean that. But Marianne and Jane Pirie are of this kind of friendship, right? 

Indigo: Yeah, they become extremely close. I think at one point, whoever Jane Pirie is working for, the family are going to move to Glasgow, and they invite her to come with them as the governess, and she actually refuses. The reason that she gives is because she doesn’t want to be parted from Marianne Woods. And obviously, it’s a context in which she feels quite comfortable to be honest about that, and it doesn’t really raise any eyebrows. I feel like a lot of, kind of, what comes next is all kind of happening behind the scenes. But I guess on the surface level, no one’s thinking anything different about their relationship. 

Ann: Yeah, because I think it does fit into this… I keep thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft, but I’ve seen this in other episodes of this podcast, other Regency era female friendships. No one finds it weird that two women are very devoted to each other at this point. 

Indigo: I think it was totally normal. I think it’s quite fashionable, like, romantic friendships. It was encouraged that women have close relationships, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to share beds with one another. Yeah, none of that is kind of out of place, I guess. So, they’re just following conventions. 

Ann: Exactly. I just want to sort of track… Because, on this podcast, we’ve had episodes about, like, the Ladies of Llangollen, we’ve talked about Anne Lister. So, we’ve talked about other “very close female friendships.” 

So, describe the school. I think this is important, to describe how small it is. Like, the students and the teachers are sharing beds, like, is how small the school is. 

Indigo: Yeah. So, I think when they set up the school, there’s maybe like, seven or eight students. The majority of them are boarders. And yeah, it’s a tiny school. We know that Marianne and Jane, well, there are only a couple of bedrooms in the house, and they divide the students between them, and then each teacher sleeps in a room with the students, kind of under their care. That was pretty normal at the time as well, and it was, I’ve read, also normal for teachers who think that some students need additional discipline, would sleep in the same bed as that student as well. There was nothing, kind of… No one raised an eyebrow about that either. 

Ann: Exactly. No, I really wanted to really set the scene for everybody just so that… Everything that’s happening is what any other school would be like, basically. There’s nothing different about what they’re doing versus any two other women who open a school somewhere else with a couple of students. And then, into this situation, you said there’s what? Like, six or seven students, and one of those students is… Explain this one student who becomes very important. 

Indigo: So, one of those students is a girl called Jane Cumming. She’s a 16-year-old girl, and she’s enrolled in the school with her two cousins. So, Jane attends as a boarder, and her two cousins attend as day students, and their grandmother, a woman called Lady Helen Cumming Gordon, lives a, let’s say, two-minute walk away from the school in Charlotte Square. So, if you kind of stand at the coffee shop where the school used to be, and you look across the road, you can see the back of Lady Cumming Gordon’s house. So, really, really close. 

Ann: I’m going to say, like, how convenient for her. Like, she’s just like, “Oh, amazing. This really good-seeming girls’ school is opening across the street from me, and I have these three girls.” 

Indigo: Yeah, “I have these three girls,” exactly. And there’s all these different ways that all the women in the story are connected to one another. So, Jane Pirie’s sister is the governess for Jane Cumming’s two cousins as well. So, it’s Pirie’s sister who recommends the school to Lady Helen Cumming Gordon. 

Ann: Well, and this is like… I’ll just pull that thread a little bit. So, Jane Cumming and her cousins are being are treated differently, and I think this is where we need to talk about Jane Cumming’s parentage and race. 

Indigo: Yes. So, Jane Cumming’s cousins are legitimate white Scottish girls, and Jane Cumming was born in India. She is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Cumming Gordon’s son, George, who goes to India as part of the East India Trading Company. Instead of doing what his mother wanted him to do, which is kind of make a career for himself over there, he decides that it would be more fulfilling, I don’t know, more fun, to kind of play house with this Indian woman that he meets while he’s in Patna in India. He kind of settles down into this family man kind of role, and together, they have two children. We don’t know Jane Cumming’s mother’s name, she’s just referred to in George’s letters as “My lady in the north.” So, north of India. 

Ann: So, Jane Cumming, I just want to… I always enjoy when someone has an interesting name. So, there’s Jane, and she’s a brother whose name is Yorrick, which I’ve never come across anyone called Yorrick except in a Shakespeare plays. 

Indigo: Yeah. And so, they grow up in India until the age of seven or eight, and then everything changes because I think George kind of writes to his mom in a letter about how happy he is with this family life, and that he sees himself as… I don’t know, I haven’t read the letters, but I think he implies that this is a marriage in everything but name. And George is due to inherit; he’s first in line, and Lady Helen Cumming Gordon is not happy about this arrangement. So, she actually threatens George to rearrange the inheritance line so that George would inherit after his brothers and their heirs, so quite far down the line. And George, being the bastard that all 18th-century men are, just says, “Fuck this, I’m going home.” And he puts Jane and Yorick into institutions in Kolkata and tries to get himself on the next boat home. But he actually dies before he gets back to Scotland. 

Ann: And so, Jane and her brother wind up in Edinburgh as well. Was that at around the same time? 

Indigo: Yeah. So, they are left in these institutions in Kolkata that are set up for the many abandoned children from company men and their kind of affairs. But I think it’s a couple of years later, Lady Helen, she has a dream, and it is this dream that changes her mind about Jane and Yorrick, and she sends for them, pays for their passages from Kolkata, where they are now in India, to Scotland. She initially wants them to set up lives for themselves at her country estate in Altyre in Elgin, which is now Gordonstoun, famously attended by King Charles. 

Ann: But ultimately, this school opens across the street, and she’s like, “What about sending the girls there?” 

Indigo: Yeah. So, Yorrick dies, and Jane is sent… I think Lady Helen had plans for her to become a milliner and kind of set up a quiet life in the countryside, but she then changes her mind and decides that Jane should come to Edinburgh and attend this boarding school. I don’t know if it’s to be closer to Lady Helen, or because she wants her to have a more formal education, but she winds up at this school. 

Ann: And this is just, sort of, you know, it’s olden times. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but it seems bizarre to me that she would send her to a boarding school that’s across the street from her house. It’s like, you’d think she’d be a day student, but no. 

Indigo: Yeah. And I don’t know if that had to do with wanting to kind of distance herself from Jane a little bit. Who knows what the thinking was there between her cousins being day students, and Jane attending as a boarder, yeah. 

Ann: But Jane’s race is a crucial part of everything that transpires, really. She’s mixed race, Indian, illegitimate. At first, I think that the two women, Marianne and Jane Pirie, they were wondering, should we even admit this person? Will this make our school look bad if we have an illegitimate person attending here? 

Indigo: Yeah, absolutely. So, I know that when Jane left India, she later says in the court case that she could read English, but she wasn’t very good at speaking it, and she preferred to speak in her own language with her Ayah, which is like a nurse, Kunji. She obviously learns to speak English along the way, but I do think that these early experiences of the colonial system really deeply shaped her life and the person that she became. 

And yeah, you’re absolutely right, when she’s enrolled in the new boarding school, Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, “hesitated to receive her,” because of her mixed race. What I’ve got here, “girl of colour” and because she was illegitimate. This kind of all comes back to anxieties around, like, colonial stereotypes that framed Indian women as overly sexual, and these all weighed really heavily on, I guess, the British colonial imagination. I think the teachers must have seen Jane as a potential liability, but they were under a lot of pressure. 

The school hadn’t immediately been successful. I think they had been looking for wealthy parents to send their daughters to the school, and I really think that they probably ultimately decided that Lady Helen’s wealth and her social standing, and the fact that she lived within walking distance, like, a two minute walk from their school, would bring a lot of positive endorsement and encourage other wealthy parents in the area to send to send their daughters there. So, they eventually agreed to admit Jane. They have very different personalities; I think Woods overcame these, kind of, initial reservations that she had, but Pirie remains uneasy. And as everything reveals itself in the court case, she becomes increasingly hostile towards Jane Cummings as well. 

Ann: Yeah, definitely, largely stemming from just racism, really. 

Indigo: Yeah, yeah. 

Ann: She really sort of… 

Indigo: It is Jane Pirie’s, kind of, racist outlooks or frames of thinking, combined with her inability to be flexible with her own desires and her own, kind of, what she wants for her life, coming together and all kind of combusting for her in the end. 

Ann: And also, I’m just picturing too, this, you know, when you think of a boarding school, I’m picturing something— It’s a little house, there’s, like, six or seven students, they’re literally sharing rooms. So, it’s like, if you’re going to a school and you and your teacher don’t get along here, like in most places, you go home at the end of the day, it’s a whole school. But here it’s just like you’re all stuck together, so these emotions would get really… You couldn’t get away from it, especially as a boarder. 

Indigo: I mean, yeah. The pressures of running a school, teaching adolescent girls… But I think there was another thing in the mix as well; Woods’s mother is also helping to run the school. I guess if we call her the in-law, to think about it in that frame, Mrs. Woods’s presence is a growing source of conflict between the two women. And we hear as well in the court case that the teachers are constantly screaming at each other about Mrs. Woods and the role that she plays in the school, because Pirie doesn’t like the active role that she is playing. 

I think that the teachers, but especially Pirie, because it’s kind of her business project, they’re under significant strain. I think Pirie’s invested quite a lot financially. And I think we could argue as well, emotionally, in the school, because she wants to set up a place for her and Woods to live happily ever after. They’re working women, so this is a way to make that happen, and it’s not immediately a success. So, her frustrations kind of manifest in her behaviour; she developed this reputation for harsh discipline, she has a volatile temper. And, yeah, Jane’s testimony kind of makes it very clear that this was all often directed solely at Jane. 

Ann: So, you mentioned this a few times… So, the court case, just to sort of get to that point. It’s kind of like, here’s a school; you described it, I think everyone can imagine this kind of stressful little building that they’re all living in, all these people with all these different emotions happening. And then, one day, Jane Cumming tells her grandmother, “Oh, the two teachers at the school are in a sexual relationship with each other, and they are demonstrating that in front of us, the students.” 

Indigo: Yes. So, yeah, one afternoon in November 1810, Jane Cumming visits her grandmother in Charlotte Square, and she basically tells her grandmother that she’s witnessed the two teachers “showing inordinate affection for one another,” is the words that she uses. I think that this has all kind of come to a head for a few different things, everything we’ve discussed so far. But I think also, a really important point here is that over the summer holidays, when all of the schoolgirls go home to their houses, you know, they’re all rich, so maybe they go off to their country estates, including Jane’s cousins, but she is left behind at the school. So, it’s just her, Jane Pirie, and Marianne Woods. 

I think, I don’t know, I’m imagining from Jane Cumming’s perspective, feelings of humiliation, rejection, jealousy, which feed into her kind of resentment for the situation that she finds herself in. It is really after everybody gets back from the summer holidays that we see things beginning to snowball. She starts bullying the other students, which results in harsher discipline from Pirie. And we know from the court case as well that Jane’s been keeping a diary where she’s, like, recording all of the discipline that she receives from Pirie. So, you know, this reads as absolutely kind of like a miserable position for Jane Cumming to be in, but I guess we could also think of it as kind of calculated, seeing what happens next. 

So, yes, she goes to her grandmother’s house, and she accuses the two teachers of inordinate affection for one another, which is, you know, a shocking accusation for a 16-year-old girl to make, considering the context. But I think it’s even more shocking to think about what Lady Helen does next, because she just ignites the drama even further. She just immediately withdraws her three granddaughters from the school, and she starts sending off letters to all the parents that she’d recommended the school to, urging them to do the same, and on what grounds. Really crucially, she didn’t inform the teachers of the accusations that had been made, and she didn’t question Jane or her two cousins any further about the accusations as well. And, yeah, the fallout was kind of swift and damaging; within 48 hours, the school was empty. 

Ann: All the other girls had been withdrawn from the school. 

Indigo: Yes, they’d all been withdrawn, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. And how does this turn into a court case then? 

Indigo: So, what happens is that, well, all of the kids are withdrawn from the school, so there’s no school kind of left to run, and it has completely destroyed the two teachers’ professional and personal reputations. And, yeah, from listening to your other episodes, I think we all know that, like, a woman’s reputation in the 18th-century world was a very important thing. Yeah, I don’t know if they kind of thought, “Well, we’ve got nothing left to lose because we’ve lost the most important thing,” but it was a bold move to decide to sue a wealthy woman for defamation, but that is exactly what they do. They go to a lawyer’s office, and they claim 10,000 pounds worth of damages, and Lady Helen is served with a court summons, I think, like, two weeks later or something. 

Ann: So, I was just thinking about the Ladies of Llangollen. At one point, an article came out talking about, “These two, I think they’re in a romantic sexual relationship,” and they considered suing, but then didn’t. So, it was a real consideration, I think, it’s like, do we want to bring more attention to these accusations? Or do we just want to not fan the flames? But, yeah, Pirie and Woods are just like… I think what you said, they have truly nothing left to lose. 

Indigo: Yeah. So, I think the difference between these two couples, if we could call them that, are that Pirie and Woods are working women; they don’t have a little cottage in the north of Wales to retire to and live happily ever after. There’s nothing. They’ve got nothing left. So why not, kind of, fight to the death, I guess? Strikes me as Pirie’s way of doing things as well. 

Ann: I think, as you’ve described them, I feel like that would be her leading the charge. [Indigo laughs] It seems like. So, this becomes a court case, which makes the whole thing blow up even more; it becomes an even more famous situation. 

And I just wanted to, like, in a bigger picture way, because we’ve talked about the Ladies of Llangollen, we’ve talked about Anne Lister, and both of those situations were, like, looking back at it now, it’s like, okay, these are lesbians, these are sapphic relationships. But they never publicly were like, “We’re gay, and it’s great!” They knew that they could never take that step. So, with Pirie and Woods, the situation is that these accusations are lobbied against them, like they couldn’t… It’s not like, wow, Regency era was chill about queer women, that’s not what’s going on. It’s just like, it’s okay as long as you don’t make a big deal of it, or as long as it’s kind of private, behind closed doors. The Ladies of Llangollen were always like, “We’re just really good friends. That’s what’s going on.” 

So, the fact that these two women who were in this close friendship… These accusations are very licentious, and especially because there’s young girls around them. It’s not just like these two are in a relationship with each other, it’s like, and they’re also tainting these rich, young women, like it’s… 

Indigo: Yeah, there’s a lot more at stake. There are so many different frames that you could look at it through. But yes, they’re in a much different position to Anne Lister and the Ladies of Llangollen. Like I said, they’re working women; there are other things that play. And yeah, I think that personalities come into it as well. Like I said, Jane Pirie just strikes me as someone who’s kind of like, “Well, I’m going to beat the bosses at their own game,” or something. I don’t know. But I think that they did want a quiet life, and it was Jane Cumming who absolutely turned that upside down for them. So yeah, the court case, it’s called Woods and Pirie v. Cumming Gordon. And it lasted from 1811 to 1819. 

Ann: So, just like, think about that, everyone. Eight years. 

Indigo: Yeah. It goes for a long time. Most of that is kind of like, waiting for people to make decisions. But I think it’s interesting to think about the story as one that is conflict between women. There are no men involved in this court case; it’s all accusations made between women of different races, different classes. But it is judged solely by men; there’s no jury. Trial by jury, I think, is introduced only a couple of years later, in 1815. 

So, the case is first heard in 1811, and then, it’s a majority of one in favour of Lady Helen Cumming Gordon. But because it’s only won by a majority of one vote, they can appeal. So, the teachers appealed, and then they won by a majority vote of one. So, then Lady Helen Cumming Gordon appeals it again, and she takes it… So, it’s heard in the Court of Session, which is the highest court in Scotland, but when Lady Helen appeals it, it’s taken to the House of Lords, which is the highest court in Britain. And then, they dilly-dally about for, like, seven years, and then in 1819, they finally read the transcripts of the court case, and they’re just like, “Oh, I’m not dealing with this. It is as it stands, the teachers have won the case.” But because it’s taken so long, of the 10,000 pounds that they initially were wanting to claim, after they paid all their legal fees, they have about 500 pounds each left. 

Ann: Well, I can’t even imagine, like, Lady Helen would have really limitless resources to go at this forever. 

Indigo: Yeah. So, she’s like, “I’m going to fight this.” I think her sons kind of advised her against it, and she was still like, “No, I’m pushing this.”

Ann: I feel like out of everyone in this whole saga, it’s like, if this situation had happened, and it was, you know, five different people, like if Pirie wasn’t there and if Lady Helen wasn’t involved, I don’t think this would have gone as far as it did in either direction. But like, those two women just seem so stubborn and just so opinionated, they’re just like, “I’m not going to let this go EVER.” And to have both of them with that sort of personality… 

Indigo: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think, yeah, it’s the personalities in the room that drag it out the way that it was. 

Ann: I do want to also just talk about. So, the trial, the testimony itself, like Jane Cumming… So, just the racial stuff comes up, right? Because she’s like this teenager, she grew up in India. And like you said at the very beginning that the two teachers were like, “Oh, should we let her in our school?” There’s this reputation of India; it’s this very sexualized place, it’s very dangerous. So, the fact that she is the person who’s lobbying these allegations, part of it is like, well, how does she even know that these sex acts exist? It must be because of her, like, Indian background. Can you talk about how her testimony was seen or understood? 

Indigo: Yeah. So, we’ve got John Clerk, who is representing the two schoolteachers. He really used Jane Cumming’s Indian heritage and her illegitimacy to undermine her credibility, really playing into those, kind of, colonial stereotypes and racialized fears. So, yeah, he claims that Jane had grown up in a culture, “lewd and lacking any notion of sexual propriety.” This, he argued, is how she came to know about sexual acts between women or, as he was arguing, fabricate them. 

I’m going to read out a few terrible quotes from him. He says that it is  “a well-known fact that the natives of those climates,” being India, “come much earlier to maturity than people in colder latitudes,” and that “the clitoris in this country is not more considerable than the nipple of the breast and that in other countries,” in this case, India, “it is common for the clitoris to be so elongated that circumcision is practiced.” So, we can kind of really hear the pseudo-scientific Enlightenment era medical theory in these quotes, and that he’s kind of claiming that people from warmer climates matured faster than those of the people who lived in Scotland, the colder latitudes, and that these deviant acts were the “pollutions of the heathen world,” from which Jane had come and that “no such crime was ever known in Scotland or in Britain.” 

So, he’s pretty clear on his point, I think, and he kind of gets backed up by one of the other lords, who is kind of overhearing the case, Lord Meadowbank. He’s another, like I said, legal figure in the case, and he kind of backs this up by saying that it was statistically impossible for two women with the same proclivity to end up in the same art class, in the same year, in the same city. This was just not possible. 

But I think what Clerk is really clever at doing is that he can position Jane as the sole corrupting influence, and isolates her as this kind of seat of contagion, and in doing so was able to preserve the moral integrity of the other white, upper-class Scottish girls who were testifying against the teachers as well, who come in as witnesses. So, he protects their reputations, but also kind of manages to reaffirm the cultural and moral superiority of Britain at the expense of Jane’s race, her heritage and her credibility. And I will say here as well that I have my suspicions about John Clerk being queer, but he’s definitely a bad egg, a bad gay, I think, because yeah, he doesn’t hold back on these kind of like, going in with the race card. 

Ann: Well, and the race element of it, like, I had vaguely heard about the situation before, but I never really read up on it, and I didn’t know the element of Jane’s mixed-race status and how that really how that comes into play. Like, that’s an important part of this whole saga as well. I’m curious what your thoughts are about why you think— I think we know why she wanted to retaliate against these teachers; Pirie was singling her out, was treating her especially cruelly, and so she wanted to retaliate somehow. But the fact that this is what she chose to allege against them, I’m curious why you think… How she knew that that was the way that she could screw them over? 

Indigo: Good question. I think that Jane knew she could do it. I think she understood… I think she was clever, and I think she understood the context that she could accuse them of this, and they would go down. I think that, to some extent, what she witnessed, or claims to have witnessed, was probably true. Whether or not the women were sexual with one another in her presence, who knows? It’s not out of the question for me. Like, I think there’s this real pull when you advocate for queer history, for wanting to see the queer people that you find in the past as heroes or heroines. But I think that these two teachers, particularly Jane Pirie, are capable of some of the things that Jane Cumming accuses them of. I think that Jane Cumming probably embellished the truth, but I think she probably didn’t make it up from nowhere. 

We see her kind of repeat this behaviour of manipulating others to get her way later in her life with her husband. She’s unhappy with the man that she marries and asks her grandmother, Lady Helen Cumming Gordon, for a separation, and her grandmother says no. So, we see her… This is a very detailed part of Scottish history, but the Scottish Episcopalian Church… So, we see her kind of repeat this behaviour with her husband because she kind of seeks revenge for the way that she’s been treated. 

In 1843, Scotland went through a historic moment called the Great Disruption, and it marks when the Scottish Presbyterian Church split into two units, the established church and the Free Church. Jane joined the Free Church, which rejected the power of landowners to appoint ministers. She comes from a family of landowners, the Cumming Gordons, and her husband, William Tulloch, owed his position as the minister to the Cumming Gordons because they put him in that position. So, he had to remain with the established church. So, by joining the Free Church, Jane not only kind of spiritually and politically separates herself from Tulloch, but she also publicly kind of exposes him as a man unable to control his wife and also snubs her family, the Cumming Gordons as well. 

Ann: Well, you were saying, like, she wanted to separate from him, and she’s not allowed to, so she kind of found a way to do it. [laughs]

Indigo: She publicly did it, yeah. And apparently, we also have letters back and forth between the family that tell us that Jane and her husband were, like, screaming at each other in the street in Elgin as well because they hated each other so much. They are now, obviously, lovingly buried next to each other in the local cemetery in Elgin. 

Ann: Well, I feel like, yeah, I was saying before about Lady Helen, Jane Pirie, Jane Cumming… It’s like this whole situation wouldn’t have happened without these three extraordinarily strong-willed, kind of shitty people. 

Indigo: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, I think they all… I just think of it from a, like, psychoanalytic kind of frame as well, of thinking about what are all these things that have happened to these people that have made them who they are, that they would kind of take such extreme measures, or have such extreme kind of emotions to get what they want or react in the way that they do? And, yeah, I think they’re all really interesting, kind of, rabbit holes to go down. 

Ann: I think it also comes to, like… On this podcast, I try to not be like, “This person’s great. This person’s awful,” but just kind of be like, “Here’s who this person was.” We all contain multitudes. But in an era like the Regency era, where women were… There was an expectation, a cultural expectation, to be kind of quiet and demure and do what you’re told and not make a stink; it’s like these three women are just like, “Fuck that,” just kind of rebelling against expectations. It just kind of shows like… Maybe that’s part of it. Like for Jane, obviously, there’s a lot going on in her background; psychotherapy would have been great for Jane Cumming. [Indigo laughs] Also, finding a community of other mixed race people, like to not be having to grow up in this society that hates her. But then also, that she doesn’t turn that inward, she turns that outward, seemingly. All of them turn their kind of rage at what the world is. 

Indigo: Yeah, absolutely. 

Ann: And so, just to sort of like, I guess people are probably dying to know. Woods and Pirie, they do not remain a couple, if they ever were a couple. 

Indigo: No, they don’t. So, after they kind of the court cases close, Marianne leaves Edinburgh and never returns. She goes to London, where she’s originally from, and she gets part-time teaching work at a school in London, and she lives for a very long time, never marries. She dies, I think, in a boarding house in Brighton at the age of 90. 

But Jane Pirie stays in Edinburgh, and she has a few more court appearances. Before the court case that we’re kind of focusing on closes, she’s actually back in the Court of Session, fighting with her sister and her brother-in-law over a block of flats that she grew up in, it’s called Gladstone’s Land on the Royal Mile. It’s actually a museum, like a historic house that you can go and visit. She’s there, she’s in court fighting with her sister because her and her younger sister, Euphemia, they inherited a flat each in Gladstone’s Land, but their third sister didn’t inherit anything. It’s not really clear why, but I think it’s because she was already married, so she was kind of financially set up, whereas Jane Pirie and her sister, Euphemia, were not. 

So, Euphemia dies and Pirie kind of claims in this court case that her sister, Margaret, the one who didn’t get anything in the inheritance, had pressured her into giving over her share of the inheritance and that she had agreed to it, but she’d only agreed to it because she was under a lot of pressure from the Woods and Pirie v. Cumming Gordon court case and that she wasn’t kind of a sound mind to be making decisions that she’d made. I think she was claiming that when she handed over the property, whatever kind of document was put together wasn’t properly witnessed, and that was her claim that she was making. 

So, Pirie hands over her property to her sister, Margaret, and then a year later, her younger sister, Euphemia, dies, and she leaves her flat to Margaret. So very quickly, Margaret goes from having none of the inheritance to, all of a sudden, having all of the inheritance. So yeah, I think just because of everything that kind of happened with the court case and it closing, it was becoming clearer and clearer that Pirie was not going to financially benefit from the outcome of the court case in any way. So, she was probably, like, scrambling to kind of…

Ann: Yeah. Just “How am I going to live?” 

Indigo: How am I going to live? Where am I going to live? What is my income going to be like? My reputation is beyond repair. So, marrying is probably not an option, but I was kind of given this flat. I think she must have rented it out, and from that money, that’s what paid for the school to be opened as well. But she’s given that over to her sister, and now she’s like, “I want it back.” So yeah, she goes back to the Court of Session. I’ve written down here that Margaret was “totally unmoved by the tears and protestations,” and that “the threatening, menacing and concussing her,” that Pirie had done to sign over the property. She says that the document she was forced to sign was not legally valid because it hadn’t been properly witnessed. But unfortunately, she was unsuccessful, and the court ruled against her.

So, I’ve been kind of researching this case for a long time now and up until earlier this year, I thought that that was all that we hear of Jane Pirie until she dies 12 years later. But earlier this year, a new piece of information came to the surface, which kind of gives us a bit more insight into Pirie and the theories that I have developed around her. It comes from a newspaper clipping, which refers to another legal proceeding in which Pirie appears in 1825. So, this is four years after losing her case to reclaim the lodgings from her sister. From this newspaper clipping, we know that she’s still living in Gladstone’s Land, in the flat, even though she doesn’t legally own it, and she’s subletting one of the rooms in the flat. She’s in court because her former lodger, a woman called Miss Bellamy, was bringing a case of assault against her. 

So, in the court, Bellamy testified that Pirie had locked her in her room with a padlock, and when she attempted to break free, Pirie had threatened her with a sword and later beat her with a stick. It says in the newspaper clipping that Bellamy appeared in the court case with her arm in a sling. So, you know, apparently, Pirie dismissed the claim, suggesting the conflict began because Miss Bellamy prayed too loudly and was referring to her scornfully as “that woman.” She insisted that it was Bellamy who had started the physical altercation. And it just says in the final line of the newspaper article, with a kind of, it feels like a touch of exasperated diplomacy, that “the magistrate recommended a private and amicable settlement to the ladies.” And then, that’s it. Then we don’t hear anything else from her until her will, where we know that she dies in her sister and brother-in-law’s flat in Glasgow in 1833, and she is 54 years old. 

So, yeah. I think her story is kind of marked by an escalating mental health kind of crisis; the pressures of running school, the trauma of the defamation trial, public questions around her sexuality, we could say the loss of her kind of partner, Marianne, a bitter legal battle with her sister, the death of another sister as well, and then just falling out with her housemate and taking it to the next level. So, yeah, I feel like she had a tough life. 

Ann: Yeah. I think it’s important to… I know you have to go. 

Indigo: I don’t have to go until 5:00. 

Ann: Oh, okay! Well then, we’ll keep chatting. [both laugh] I wasn’t sure what the time zone was. 

Indigo: I’ve got another hour! 

Ann: Well then, great! Let’s keep talking. 

So, in terms of, like, queer history, how… A story like this, I think it’s really important; obviously, I think looking at all of queer history is important. But I also like having this story in the same context as the Ladies of Llangollen, as Anne Lister, just to have another… I don’t want to make it seem like the Regency era was this really chill time for lesbians. It’s like, no, actually. The fact that an accusation of this relationship was so devastating to their reputation, and they saw it as so devastating to their reputation, that they then, started a defamation trial, it’s interesting to me. Because it wasn’t part of the trial, also, like, is it possible for women to have sex? Has that ever happened anywhere in the world? Didn’t that come up in the trial somewhere? 

Indigo: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s, like, the main theme of the court case is like: Is it possible for two women to have sex? So, yeah, we’ve got John Clerk kind of being like, “It is possible, but it only happens in hot places where people have, like, elongated clitorises,” and yeah. But then, we’ve got Henry Erskine and his legal team that are representing Lady Helen Cumming Gordon, and they do something that’s really interesting as a way to argue their point. They counter Clerk’s argument that lesbianism didn’t exist in Europe by universalizing it. 

So, they compile this extensive, multilingual list of historical references to sexual passion between women. It’s got a great title, it’s called “Authorities with the Regard to the Practice of Tribadism.” And tribadism is from the Greek tribein, which means ‘to rub.’ It was a word that was more frequently in circulation than lesbian, which was a term at the time, or sapphic, as well. But tribadism maybe is the more formal one that you would use in legal proceedings. So, the list drew from classical and contemporary sources, Greek, Latin, Arabic and English, but includes lots of references to literature, and drama, and travel writing as well. It’s a super kind of comprehensive list of this historical terminology, and I think a surprisingly underused resource available to queer historians. It’s not transcribed, so you have to come to Edinburgh and view it in the archive, but I think it’s a rich source that’s been untapped. 

Ann: And this is, like, a document, just so I understand… So, like, the trial was being like… What a bananas trial. [Indigo chuckles] But it was like, “Is lesbianism possible in Scotland?” was part of what was being discussed. Not just like, did these women do it? But it’s like, could they possibly have? Because in Scotland, I don’t know if that happens. So, this guy made a document that’s just got like, here are lots of examples of this happening in Europe, basically? Is that what you’re saying? 

Indigo: Yeah. He’s being like, “Yeah, it’s really normal for women to touch each other and be sexual with one another. Therefore, Jane Cumming is telling the truth, and Lady Helen Cumming Gordon was right to have concern and express her concern.” So, I think he quotes here: 

There is very little doubt that in all ages and in all countries, women have enjoyed this mode of seeking pleasure, and it is perfectly possible for ladies of the best character to find delight in sexual relationships. 

Yeah, so it kind of sounds like he’s separating morals from sexual preference and almost arguing that same-sex attraction is natural, rather than what we would consider at the time that, you know, people’s understanding is that sapphic desire is shameful or criminal or non-existent. But this is an argument to bolster Lady Helen’s position in the case by saying that Jane Cumming was kind of telling the truth, and that Lady Helen acted reasonably, given what she believed to be true. But, you know, the courtroom is obviously scandalized by this. I’ve got another quote here of one judge kind of famously exclaiming, “Are we to say that every woman who has formed an early intimacy has slept in the same bed with another is guilty? Where is the innocent woman in Scotland?” [both chuckle] I know. Great. A great line. A great line.

Ann: It’s a good line, yeah.

Indigo: Where is the innocent woman in Scotland, indeed? Erskine always kind of also kind of pulls on this kind of race thing, racial dynamics as well, because he argues that Jane’s Indian background, because of it, there was a greater risk that Jane faced if she was caught lying. So, she was kind of, paradoxically, a more reliable witness, more in line, I think. 

And Jane’s testimony is very lively. She testified in the Court of Session over four days, and there are copies of the note-taker’s longhand in the archives, and it spans for 49 pages. She describes the teacher’s sexual practices in, like, considerable detail and with such lively colours that the judges soon began… They were soon kind of became perplexed at how a 16-year-old girl could have come into the possession of so much kind of detailed knowledge. I’ll give you a few quotes from her testimony. 

She recalls more often than once, “being disturbed early in the morning by the teachers who were speaking and kissing and shaking in her bed,” and, “When Miss Woods came into the bed, she felt them both take up their shifts and she felt Miss Woods move and shake the bed, and she was breathing so high and so quick.” And that “Along with this heavy breathing,” this is the line that really does it for me, she described hearing a noise that she likened to “Putting one’s finger into the neck of a wet bottle.” [small snort of laughter] Yeah. 

Ann: Yeah, very vivid. 

Indigo: Very vivid. 

Ann: Because also, in terms of like, what you’re saying, she could feel the shifts and stuff because she, and we talked earlier on about this small space and people sharing bedrooms and stuff, but she and Jane Pirie shared a bed, I think. Right? So, she’s saying like, Miss Woods came to the bed that she, Jane Cumming, was in with Miss Pirie, and the two of them were, like, going at it next to her, basically. 

Indigo: Yeah. That is exactly what she is claiming. So, again, another reason to be horrified as well about kind of what is being claimed in this courtroom. I think that these things are kind of challenging themes and challenging images to hold in your head and break down and decipher what we think is true and false. And yeah, I think honestly, I don’t know where I sit on it, but I think there are some other… 

The thing that comes to mind when I think about it is one of the books that was written about this court case from the 1980s that is really worth reading is called The Scotch Verdict. And it does a kind of back and forth between some of the original court documents and then the author Lillian Faderman and her female partner, coming to Scotland, coming to Edinburgh, from America and going into the archives and their conversations about what they think happened in the court case, and what is true, and what is not true. I like the way that that book is authored of, kind of, this back and forth in the conversation. Lillian and her partner hold completely different views on what they think is true and what is not true. And yeah, I think everybody can make their own decisions about what they think… How far the truth was bent, for lack of a better word. 

Ann: It reminds me, even when I was reading about this, it reminds me so much – and maybe it’s because I was recently researching this for something else – but the Salem Witch Trials, which also really hinged on magistrates really having to decide, like, whether this is true, whether it’s not true, and it’s like, young teenage girls and their testimony. But part of where the Salem Witch Trials, I don’t know how much people know about it, but this enslaved woman, Tituba, was she was accused of being a witch, and she came in, and it was because of her— And I think she also testified for like three days or something. She was such a storyteller; she wove this incredible saga, and it was from that that everything just kind of like exacerbated. 

I feel like Jane Cumming is a bit of that. Like you’re saying, it was this lively testimony; it went on for days. She clearly was, whatever her motivations were, like she was good at telling her story. And the details that she’s throwing in is just like, well, if there’s this many details, how can it not be true? Sort of thing. 

Indigo: Exactly, yeah. And she’s a 16-year-old girl who’s had quite a kind of shitty childhood or quite tumultuous, and maybe she just wants someone to listen to her, and she’s been given a platform. I think another really interesting part of her testimony, and if you’ve seen The Children’s Hour, the black and white film, I think it’s 1961 starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, which is an American take on this original Scottish story with a lot of changes made to it. But the thing that stays the same is this kind of infamous keyhole scene. So, in Jane’s testimony, she claimed that the maid Charlotte Whiffin, who is one of the people who testifies in the court case, she had witnessed the teachers committing indecencies on the drawing room sofa, seen through a keyhole in the door. 

In the court records, it includes hand-drawn illustrations of this alleged moment, complete with kind of a marked line of vision from the keyhole to the sofa to see if the way that, you know, the objects set out in the room could make the story possible. We know Jane’s descriptions are highly detailed, and they’re kind of uncomfortable in their detail, reading more like voyeuristic fiction than actual reliable testimony. And so, they’ve kind of marked it all out, drawn it all out on this map, and they actually go to the school, and they find that there’s no keyhole on the door to the drawing room, and the story unravels completely. 

I think after this, Jane’s confidence begins to kind of falter, and her answers become confused, and she withdraws this claim of the story of the keyhole. So, yeah, it’s really not clear, I think, to anybody, and I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of what is true and what is not true. I think from reading people’s different opinions with Lillian Faderman in her book and other people that I’ve spoken to about this court case, everybody brings a different lens to it, or a different way of seeing it, or their own opinion on what happened. And so, it is up to everyone to make their own decisions about what they think. 

Ann: There’s an element that we haven’t discussed yet that I think is also interesting to consider in terms of how it all turned out, which is the potential queer identity of Jane Cumming and her… She had, I think… Okay, it’s such a nuanced thing because there’s lots of children who idolize their teachers, and sometimes that can be seen as a crush, and sometimes it’s more sort of like, idolatry, and sometimes it’s like, “I want to be like that person,” or whatever. But it seems like with Jane Cumming, she had a romantic crush on Miss Woods, right? 

Indigo: Yeah, I think she had a romantic crush on Miss Woods. Another thing that happens at the school is that one of the other schoolgirls kind of dobs Jane Cumming in because Jane has made sexual advances towards this other schoolgirl. So, there’s that as well. Yeah, she kind of like, propositions this student, and she gives really vivid, explicit testimonies about sapphic acts; this is obviously all going on in her head. 

I think another really important part of this story or ingredient is that Jane came from a place where same-sex desire was not criminalized or historically had not been criminalized. It wasn’t until 1860, after Jane’s death, that the British imposed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which was really heavily based on Henry VIII’s 1533 Buggery Act. And so, colonialism played a major role in kind of reshaping and suppressing India’s own ways of understanding gender and sexuality. 

So, a really great book that I have used in my research a lot is called A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila Rupp. I found a broad kind of range of examples relating to female desire in India at the time. And you know, when you search a document on your laptop keys, and it had, like, 80 hits for India come up in this book. And so, you know, Jane’s obviously a child at this time, but she’s in a context where she’s not taking on kind of the homophobia that has been built into the systems here in Scotland. 

Ann: So, yeah, her childhood in India, I think, is a key ingredient to all of this, because it could be when people are like, “Well, how could a 16-year-old girl know all these details of things?” It’s like, well, maybe these are things that she saw or witnessed or heard about in India. I mean, at the same point, I’ve done episodes this series about what novels were out there, and it’s like, maybe she read Fanny Hill.

Indigo: Well, yeah. Exactly, exactly. I mean, Altyre in Elgin, where she was sent when she first moved to Scotland, is like a massive house with probably a huge library; she probably did pull books off the shelf that kind of had these things in them. But I do think a really important thing to consider, that has been done a little bit, but could probably do with some more work, is kind of decolonizing Jane’s side of the story, and what might come out of that for us and Jane, maybe in terms of her of her sexuality. 

But, you know, just because I know some of your previous episodes have been about the Ladies of Llangollen and Anne Lister, just a little bit about Jane and Marianne as well. I think that, like, if we talk about their relationship, so like we kind of talked about at the beginning, romantic friendships between women were fashionable, they were socially acceptable, it wasn’t unusual for women to share beds and exchange passionate letters to one another, and these relationships are framed in kind of non-sexual terms. But we know, because of people like Anne Lister, and we could say the Ladies of Llangollen as well, that these were kind of convenient cover stories sometimes for what was going on under the surface. 

So, I’ve kind of tried to look at Pirie and Woods’ relationship through that frame as well, but it does kind of explain why we’ve got Pirie kind of writing quite freely about her feelings for Marianne to other people. I’ve got a quote here that says: 

I have loved Marianne for eight years with sincere and ardent affection, contemplated her as a model of every virtue, and would never be able to conquer her affection if Woods had spurned me. 

And so, yeah, like I said, it’s kind of a cover story, I guess. And I think we think about companions as well. Obviously, Woods and Pirie are in a different position because they are not part of the landed gentry; they’re middle-class women, but maybe opening the school is their way of finding a way to be together. 

Ann: Well, and that’s where I just keep thinking again about Mary Wollstonecraft, who had so much love for her friend Fanny Blood, and she wrote about this, you know, “I just want her and me to live together.” And they opened a school, and it’s just kind of like, “How can I find a way that just her and I can…?” It just reminds me of that as well.

Indigo: Absolutely. 

Ann: And I think what’s sort of compelling about this whole, like, fucked up situation is that through the testimony and through the letters of people, it’s like you’ve got Jane Cumming, you’ve got Pirie and Woods, who are all people who are living in a time and a place where they might not have the vocabulary to understand who they are or what their desires are, and they’re saying things. We can look at those now to be like… They go to a court case where you have to define things so strictly, and they weren’t able to because they didn’t have the vocabulary to really understand… The fact that Jane Cumming, I think, when you see the intense creativity and the description and what she’s talking about, all these words, this is clearly something she’s been thinking about, but maybe she doesn’t realize that she has those desires herself. And also, she’s 16, so like, of course she doesn’t! There are these people who don’t really understand their own psychologies, being forced into a court case where it has to be this or that. 

Indigo: Absolutely, yeah. It is funny thinking about, like, what literature was available and how you could see yourself reflected in that literature to find different ways to live. You know, we know we know that in 1809, Pirie gave Woods a copy of a woman called Anna Seward, her new book of poems, as a kind of celebration or celebratory gift for the opening of their school. Many of the poems… So, Anna Seward never marries, and many of the poems focus on her kind of thwarted love interest, this woman called Honora Sneyd. Anna Seward also writes lots of poems about the Ladies of Llangollen, and the smoking gun for me is that, like the Ladies of Llangollen, Anna Seward also had a dog called Sappho. So, I think that we can say from things like that, it’s like, I’m building the evidence that there was something going on between the two schoolteachers, it’s just to what extent that was expressed in front of young children, I think, that is what makes it kind of hard to stomach.

But yeah. So, Jane Cumming has a biography. It’s called Scandal and Survival, and the biographer in there refers to Pirie as “one very frustrated lesbian.” There’s this great quote as well that she includes from a Bible that she gifts to Marianne, and it says: 

Accept my beloved of that book, which can give consolation in every situation. And dearest earthly friend, never open it without thinking of her, who would forgo all friendship, but her God’s to possess yours. 

[chuckles] I think it’s very intense, obviously, in Jane Pirie style. 

But yes, we have a little bit more, I guess, from the adults in the story. Jane Pirie is 30, and Marianne Woods is 28 when the court case kind of starts. But yeah, maybe 16-year-old Jane doesn’t have role models to model what life could look like for her if she wanted it to, in the same way that Pirie and Woods are seeing through Anna Seward’s poems about the Ladies of Llangollen, something that is possible for them. Yeah. It seems like probably Jane Cumming did have access to sensationalized novels about sapphic behaviour, but not something that was… positive representation, shall we say. And I think as a sapphic person in the 21st century, that kind of positive representation is really important, and it can make you or break you. We can see here how it definitely broke all of these women in the end, I think. 

Ann: We were just setting up this interview and stuff, and you mentioned that there’s a film in the works. 

Indigo: Yes! 

Ann: What are you able to tell us about that? 

Indigo: So, there is a new film coming out. The working title is Miss Pirie and Miss Woods, so if you give it a Google, there should be a few bits of information that come up about it. But I don’t think that’s the finalized title for it. I think it should hopefully, fingers crossed, be coming out next year. But I was heavily involved in the organizing of the film to be shot in a few locations around Edinburgh, which is really exciting. I got to be on set and meet the cast and speak with the director, who I know has been working on the film for a very, very long time. It was amazing to be in a context with so many other people who are really passionate about this story and all of the many complexities that the women in it hold, and wanting to bring that to the public. 

Ann: That’s so exciting. I love that you got to be involved in it, and I love that that is going to be in the world so that this story can be more widely seen and more widely known. 

You’ve mentioned a couple of books. What would be your entry point if somebody wanted to read more about this? What’s, like, the best first book to read about it, do you think? 

Indigo: I think the best thing to do is to probably actually watch The Children’s Hour if you haven’t seen The Children’s Hour. Think like, sensationalized black and white film where there’s lots of instrumental dramatic music, and people do, like, long stares at one another, and all the credits run before the film plays. I’d watch that because I think it gives you a good overview of the dynamics. 

And then I would read The Scotch Verdict by Lillian Faderman, which is the 1980s novel that kind of goes back and forth in time, so that you get some, I’d say contemp— modern, but it’s the ‘80s, so dated now, but kind of commentary to help you along with the story. The most kind of comprehensive and academic book is Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming by Frances B. Singh. That one is for the history hard-hitters, I think, like, lots and lots of detail, but a really good reference book if you’re going to also deep dive into the story. And then if you just happen to find yourself in Edinburgh, I would head to the Signet Library, where you can access, for free, all of the original court case documents as well, and watch the new film when it comes out. 

Ann: Yes, exactly. I know. Like, this episode is coming out in 2026. So, is it 2026 that the film is coming out or 2027, probably?

Indigo: Yeah, I believe so. Hopefully, you’ll be hearing more about it by the time this episode is, which is really exciting. 

Ann: Yeah. And I love— I think it’s such a rich topic for a film because it’s so multifaceted, and there can be a lot of – maybe not as in the same level as The Children’s Hour – but you know, a lot of longing looks, a lot of meaningful glances. [both laugh] 

Indigo: Yeah. I think the thing about the story is that, like I said, there are so many different perspectives that you can look at it from. There are so many different frames of analysis as well that everyone can take away something from the story that is personal to them, and their experiences, whether you’re queer, whether you’ve worked at a boarding school, whether you’re mixed-race, there’s something in there that is… It’s just a really kind of deeply human story. 

Ann: I’m just thinking of other things. It’s like, if you’ve ever had a crush on your teacher, if you ever felt like the third wheel, [Indigo laughs] if you’ve ever had a grandmother who didn’t want to spend time with you. 

Indigo: Oh my god, so true! [laughs]

Ann: I think there’s something that most people could relate to with this. 

Just as sort of a final question, and I’m curious what you’ll say, but just in terms of like, this episode is coming out— And you first reached out to me because I’m doing this Regency Era series, and this is a Regency era season. Do you think there’s anything… The fact that this happened when it did, like 1811, is when the court case started, is there something specific about that time period? Like, would this have played out wildly differently if it happened 100 years later, or 100 years before? 

What I’m going to mention while you’re thinking about it is that this is how you described at the very beginning, how Edinburgh was just building the New Town, right? So, it’s kind of like, the two teachers, this is their opportunity to kind of make a name for themselves. Maybe 100 years ago, women couldn’t have done that in the first place. But also, if Edinburgh’s New Town wasn’t just starting, then there wouldn’t have been this opportunity to maybe start the school. So, I think that was crucial, the timing of it in that way. 

Indigo: Yes, I think the timing of it is crucial. We’re in, like, an Enlightenment period, we’re in a period where Scotland is really trying to assert itself as a colonial force, and there’s all of the ties with India that are beginning to really kind of speed up in development. I think if it had happened 100 years before, we’re kind of at the tail end of the Witch Trials in Scotland as well, so perhaps they would have found themselves kind of more facing down that barrel. 

Ann: Accused of witchcraft versus… Yeah, yeah.

Indigo: Yeah. [laughs] And I think that if it had happened 100 years later, we’re just kind of heading into the First World War. Sexology has kind of developed as a field of study. Maybe they would have been able to live more freely without kind of these accusations absolutely destroying them. Yeah, so I think it is very much about the context for the way that things unfold. 

Ann: I think also just Jane’s identity, like, this was sort of in the early stages, when she was born, the early stages of kind of British colonialism happening in India, so people weren’t quite sure what to make of these mixed-race children. Like you said, there were these institutions where she went to, so there’s an increasing generation of the mixed race children of it. But 100 years later, that was more common. Just from other research I’ve done, I know that there were schools for mixed race children 50 years later, even. But she was kind of this first generation where everyone’s just kind of like, “Can she go to a boarding school? Can she be part of white society? We’re not sure.” But that got codified later on. 

I think there’s a lot of this story, just talking this through right now, I didn’t know what the answer was either, but I’m like, yeah, I think this could only really happen when it happened the way that it did. 

Indigo: Yeah, I think absolutely. Yeah. [laughs] I don’t think I have anything else to add to it. I think it is very, like, of its time. It’s of its time, but also timeless in a way of, like, the emotions that are brought up by everybody as well. It’s about jealousy and kind of manipulation, and people kind of acting on dreams and, like, power dynamics. Those things are all timeless. 

Ann: Yeah, because like The Children’s Hour takes place in the 20th century, I think. They take the timeless elements of it to make that story work. But the way that it did happen in history, I think, was very much of its time and place as well. 

Indigo: Yes, the colonial forces that were at play, absolutely, and education as well. 

Ann: I was just thinking, yeah, exactly. Just like, women opening— I forget what order all the episodes come out in and what’s already aired, but there’s numerous instances of women who are just like, “Let’s start a school!” It’s kind of like that was the thing, of like, “What can we do? I don’t like being a governess. Let’s start a school.” So many women are just kind of like, what else can we do? I guess we’ll start school. So, it was really that era as well, I guess. 

But yeah, thank you so much for this! I think it’s such a valuable conversation. When you first contacted me about it, I thought, oh, this is a perfect sort of continuation of this kind of theme of queer history, like the queer Georgian era, where I did appreciate, for myself personally, that the Ladies of Llangollen and Anne Lister are largely positive queer stories in history, because I think, like you said, that’s so crucial for people to hear and to understand. But I didn’t want to leave the impression that, like, the Regency era was this, like, utopia for lesbians. Like, no. No, society was not… 

Indigo: Yeah, I think class plays a massive role in your future, your ability to be a queer person in the Regency period. Like, if you’ve got the money, you can make it happen. It might be a little bit of like, struggle, and people might kind of look at you a bit strangely, but more or less, you can just do whatever you want. But if you had to work for a living, there are a lot more hoops to jump through. 

Ann: Exactly. And I think that’s, yeah, the class of it is such an important part as well. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this, like, weird, interesting, messed-up story. [laughs]

Indigo: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. 

Ann: Okay, so I wasn’t sure if we were going to do the Scandaliciousness Scale for this, because I was like, well, I don’t want to go through for like, each person, because that’s complicated. So, what I thought we could do is kind of like, for the situation. If we look at the whole scenario, and I’ll just put it on the scale as such. 

So, the first category is Scandaliciousness. So, if you look at like, Woods and Pirie v. Cumming Gordon, how scandalous was this situation seen at the place and the time? I think the court case, but also just what was happening… Well, I guess we don’t really know what was happening. So, the concept of two lesbian schoolteachers having sex in front of a child, how…? 

Indigo: I think it’s like, off the charts, Scandaliciousness, like, 11 out of 10 kind of area, in terms of how people at the time would have felt about it. Yeah. 

Ann: The highest I can go is 10, but you know. [laughs] 

Indigo: [laughs] Okay, 10 out of 10.

Ann: 10 out of 10, but, you know, like, asterisk, higher if possible. Yeah. I think because, yeah, in terms of Scandaliciousness, because you’ve listened to the podcast, obviously, so it’s not just like how scandalous do we think it is personally, but how was it taken at the time? And it was like, the absolute most scandalous thing anyone could imagine. 

Indigo: I think so. I think all the lawyers are just, like, absolutely scandalized by having to deal with it. They’re just like, “We don’t want to deal with it.” 

Ann: Yeah. Well, and the fact that, like, all the students withdrew from the school in a day. 

Indigo: Yeah. And a few of them were refused entry into other schools on the grounds of, like, bringing sapphic vices with them. 

Ann: Like you had been in this… The school itself was so tainted, instantaneous. 

Indigo: Yeah, it was a closed court case, but I think it was, you know, whispers kind of thing. These girls that had attended the school but had nothing to do with the accusations, were denied entry into other schools because of their association with the so-called sapphic vices. 

Ann: So, the next category is Schemieness. Now, I think Jane Cumming, high, high on Schemieness, high on manipulation, high on… The other… I don’t know. And then Lady Helen, I feel like she’s up there, very litigious. Jane Pirie, even, I think. I don’t know. Miss Woods, though, I think, brings it down. I don’t know if she was a very schemey person. Like, if we’re thinking of them as a collective, how schemey was this situation? 

Indigo: When I was kind of thinking about it before the podcast, and I was like, what am I going to give it? That was also my train of thought, kind of going through everyone and being like, some are high, some are low. But yeah, Marianne Woods kind of brings it down as this like, kind of innocent woman who’s swept up in the comings and goings and the opinions of all these very direct women. So, I would give it like a 7 out of 10, I think. I don’t know if that’s still too high, but yeah. 

Ann: I think that Jane Cumming’s level of schemieness is so high, it’s like… If we average out her and Miss Woods, I think that might— Because Miss Woods is like a 2, Jane Cummings is like a 10. So, if we like… Where do we land? So, I think 7 is fair. 

And I mean, asking you this question is… The Significance of this story, I think, to you, personally, is very high because you’ve been doing all this research on it and the film and everything. But if you think, like, including that, and then also the broader context of what does this mean to queer history. How significant do you think this whole saga was? 

Indigo: I think that it is a significant story in the way that race and sexuality play together in this story. I think that sometimes when you’re a queer historian, maybe we forget about the role that race and class can play in your experience of queerness in the past, and I think that this story is significant because it brings that really sharply into focus, of how it can change your experience, and that not all queer experiences in the past were the same, if that makes sense. So, I do think that it’s a bit of a forgotten story, or it’s like an underdog kind of story. Yeah, so I think it’s significant, but I think it should be more widely known, and I hope that this film that’s coming out will do that. So, for Significance, I think I’d give it like, an 8 out of 10 in terms of like, [laughs] in terms of the significance that it should be having, but maybe is yet to have. Is that allowed? 

Ann: Anything is allowed. I think that… I don’t have on-hand in front of me… Actually, I do. I’m going to see what Anne Lister got. Anne Lister got a 10 out of 10 for Significance. And I think that TV show really… Yeah. I think an 8 is fair for this, where like, it’s significant, but it’s not widely known. But hopefully with this film, it will become… It can work its way up to that Anne Lister 10. 

Indigo: [laughs] Yeah. You know, I think unfortunately, Marianne asked Jane Pirie to burn all her letters, so maybe we don’t have the explicit sexual detail from the teachers themselves, even though we do get it from Jane Cumming if she is telling the truth. But yeah. Maybe it will creep up to a 10 later down the line if I do more primary source kind of digging. But I think for now, I’d like to give it an 8 in terms of the different stories that it tells for queer history in the Regency period. 

Ann: I’d forgotten that this is yet another story where it’s just like— I saw somebody, I think they posted on social media somewhere. They’re like, “If I had a time machine, what I’d do is go back in time to all the times where somebody interesting had their letters burned, and I would stop that from happening!” 

Indigo: Yes!

Ann: And people responded, and they’re like, “Yes, I would stop Cassandra Austen.” There’s so many people where I’m just like, just be like Anne Lister and tuck them up inside your chimney or whatever. 

Indigo: Exactly!

Ann: It’s like, don’t destroy them! Just hide them, and hopefully one of your cool descendants will find it, and they won’t burn it. I don’t know. You don’t have to burn them, just tuck them away. 

Indigo: Tuck them away! Yeah, exactly. I’ve got a checklist of like… Because I do a lot of research into queer people in the 18th and early 19th century, and I have a checklist of, like, behaviours that I check off to be like: they never married, they lived alone or travelled a lot, they burn all their letters, they had a really good friend, they were a bit of an oddity, or like, had strong opinions or personality. And yeah, I think this fits all of that. 

Ann: Well, and to me personally, I have this book coming out, when people are listening to this, next month, in February, my biography of Caroline of Brunswick. When she knew she was dying, like she had a slow sort of opium-based death, and the doctors were like, “Guess what? You’re dying.” And she’s like, “Okay, I’ve got to get my papers in order, I guess.” So, she wrote her will, and then she told her servants, she’s like, “Burn. My. Documents.” And I’m like, nooooo! [Indigo laughs] Why couldn’t you have just died? And then the documents would still be there. But she lived long enough to be like, “Burn it all, bitch.” I’m like, [whimpers]. But it would have been so good! So many people.

Indigo: I know, it’s so frustrating. 

Ann: Anyway, so that’s why I like imagining a time machine that just goes back to just save documents. 

The fourth category is the Sexism Bonus. So, how much did sexism, which I’m interested to know in this story, like, you know, were it not for the patriarchal culture, like Pirie and Woods could have had a different job, maybe. Although it seems like opening a school was of interest to them both. But I don’t know, I don’t know. If they had lived in a society where it was easier to be an unmarried woman, then there wouldn’t have been these various pressures on them, maybe they wouldn’t have… Well, Pirie potentially wouldn’t have reached such an extreme state of mental distress if she wasn’t always panicking about money. 

Indigo: Yeah, yeah. I think same for Jane Cumming, maybe she wouldn’t have had such a kind of explosive marriage if she was allowed to just, firstly, not marry, and then also if she decided that she didn’t like her husband anymore, she could just get a divorce. I think that all of the women would have benefited a lot from not having to deal with the patriarchy. 

Ann: Well, even the court trial, which was all male lawyers, a male judge. 

Indigo: Yeah, exactly. Like I said, it’s like women’s business, but it’s being judged by men, people who, you know, have no lived experience, who are kind of like, equally disgusted and curious about what is being put before them, when they don’t really… They might understand the culture of romantic friendships from the outside, but they can’t experience them as a woman in the Regency period and understand where the lines are, how they might be crossed, what that might look like, what that might feel like. So, yes, I think that the women would have had completely different experiences if they were not at the mercy of the patriarchy. 

Ann: We’ve talked about class and race, homophobia, all these other things, but it’s like, yeah, sexism and the patriarchy is also an ingredient in this whole situation.

Indigo: Absolutely, and age as well. Like, the young people and the old people and the women in their thirties and everybody’s just, like, trying to survive. So, if I have to give it a score in terms of like, how much the patriarchy affected their lives. 

Ann: It’s like not just how much the patriarchy affected their lives, but how much better their lives could have been without it. [Indigo laughs] Which is like, you know, just as a holistic thing, it’s like, well, they were able to open a school, and maybe they would have done that if they had all the options in the world, but…

Indigo: I’m going to say like, a 7, I think. I think opening a school was a really good way for working women to be able to live together and make it work, kind of thing. So, yeah, maybe that didn’t the patriarchy didn’t affect them in that way. But in terms of like, the court case, and we’re thinking about Jane Cumming, and her father abandoning her for his inheritance, and the way that Jane Pirie… I guess it’s like with her sisters— But yeah, her financial struggles and stuff, I think it deserves, yeah, a 7. 

Ann: So, that gets her total— Her. [chuckles] By her, I mean, this whole situation, which is a gendered female, is a score of 32, which is the same score as Mary Wollstonecraft. So, I feel like the story… I kept thinking of her as well. So, I think that fits in nicely in that neighbourhood, you know, not quite top 10 scores, but like, in the upper echelon. Anne Lister, just so you know, 36, but her letters weren’t burned [Indigo laughs], so we know a bit more about her, so that makes sense that she scores a little bit higher. 

Yeah, thank you for suggesting we do this, because I had been thinking I’m like, oh, are we going to do it? And then I’m like, how could we? But sure! This is the first time I’ve scored a situation and not a person. 

Indigo: I feel honoured! 

Ann: But I think it all works. So, thank you. 

—————

So, you can keep up with Indigo Dunphy-Smith; her website is A Queer Was Here. I’m excited to have gotten to talk about Edinburgh again, frankly, after the Mary, Queen of Scots stuff, I was interested to hear about what was happening there in this Regency era. 

Speaking of the Regency era, I wrote a book that takes place in that time. Here’s my cat, Hepburn. I think she’s going to walk right across. Hey, babe! She’s excited. She’s like, “Plug your book more, Ann.” So, my book is called Rebel of the Regency, it is a nonfiction biography of Caroline of Brunswick, who was the queen. She was, you know, the Regency era, that’s named after a man who was the regent, later, he was George IV, and Caroline was his long-suffering wife. My book is coming out on February 10th in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia. You can preorder it from anywhere you get books, in all of those places. Honestly, if you go to Amazon, you can get it. If you’re in another country and you want to get it, like if you go to Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Australia, you can hopefully order it for yourself as well. 

When you preorder it— You’re running out of time for this to get the treats! If you preorder my book and then send me a picture of your receipt, you can get a Caroline of Brunswick limited edition paper doll drawn by Siobhan Gallagher. You can also get a one-year free membership to my Substack and also to my Patreon. All the information about my book, including links to buy it are at RebelOfTheRegency.com. And in just a few weeks, I’m going to be having my book launch for my book. It’s happening here in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. So, if you live here, go to McNally Robinson, Friday, February 13th at 7:00 p.m. Some of you listening might not live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but don’t worry, you can take part as well because it’s going to be on YouTube, live streamed, and I put a link to that in the show notes for this episode. 

And next week, honestly, it’s our Regency Era. We’re all in and we’re going to be getting into, frankly, another sapphic story next week. When I was planning what I was going to talk about. I’m just like, here’s some people who are notable of the era. And then it turns out this is just like a real sapphic season, so I’m here for it, having a nice time. Let’s go, lesbians. And I’ll talk to you all next week. Thanks so much. Keep your pants on and your tits out. Hepburn says goodbye, too, if you’re watching the video, that’s her butt. Okay, byeee! 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Regency Era artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

References:

Learn more about Indigo’s work at A Queer Was Here 

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