Scottish teacher and litigant Jane Pirie was BOTD in 1779. Born in Edinburgh to a middle-class family, she attended school and higher education classes, with the intention of becoming a governess. When she was 23, she met Marianne Woods in an art class. They formed a intimate, erotically-charged friendship, becoming so inseparable that Pirie turned down a position in Glasgow so as not to be parted from Woods. In 1809, they opened a girls’ school, aimed at attracting the daughters of wealthy bourgeois families. After initial financial struggles, they gained the patronage of Lady Helen Cumming Gordon, who enrolled two of her grand-daughters as day pupils, and a third illegitimate granddaughter, Jane Cumming, as a boarder. Jane had been born in India, the result of an affair between Lady Helen’s son and an Indian woman, before being sent to Scotland to live with her grandmother. Woods and Pirie were initially suspicious about accepting a mixed-race pupil, but conceded in the knowledge that Lady Helen would promote the school to other families. Jane reportedly developed a crush on Woods and made a pass at a fellow pupil, and was violently disciplined by Pirie for bad behaviour. In 1810, Jane accused Pirie and Woods of displays of “inordinate affection”. Lady Helen immediately withdrew Jane from the school and encouraged the other parents to remove their children. Within a fortnight, the school was closed. Faced with financial ruin, Pirie and Woods sued Lady Helen for libel in 1811. The resulting trial became a media sensation, involving extensive discussions about the existence of lesbianism, and graphic testimony from Jane about Pirie’s and Woods’ nocturnal sexual acts. Pirie and Woods won their lawsuit, and Lady Helen was required to pay damages of £10,000. Legal appeals to the House of Lords dragged on for a further five years, eating through most of the financial settlement and leaving Pirie and Woods penniless. With their reputation in ruins, Wood and Pirie parted, and Wood found a teaching job in London. Pirie remained in Edinburgh but was unable to find work. In 1820, she sued her own sister for cheating her out of the family inheritance, losing the case. She faded into obscurity, possibly suffering a nervous breakdown, dying in 1833 aged 53. The court case inspired American playwright Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play The Children’s Hour, a drama about two female schoolteachers whose reputations are ruined by a pupil’s false accusation, resulting in one of the women admitting her lesbian attraction and committing suicide. A critical and commercial hit, it inspired the 1936 film These Three, in which the lesbian sub-plot was removed to comply with Hollywood censorship rules. William Wyler’s 1963 film The Children’s Hour, starring Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, followed Hellman’s narrative more faithfully, and was one of the first Hollywood films to deal openly with lesbianism.