Scotch Verdict*: The Real-Life Story That Inspired The Children’s Hour

On November 25, 1811, Charles Hope, who had been Lord Justice-Clerk of the Second Division, was made President of the Court of Session. His approval of John Clerk’s petition was his last act as head of the Second Division. Charles Hope’s rise continued until, at the death of the Duke of Montrose in 1836, he became Lord Justice-General, which was the highest official position in Scotland. Hope’s role as the Lord Justice-Clerk of the Second Division was taken by Lord Boyle. Hope requested Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, of the First Division to assume on Woods and Pirie against Dame Camming Gordon the spot he himself had vacated to become Lord President.

Woodhouselee had been on the bench since 1805. Twenty-five years earlier he had become a professor of universal history at the University of Edinburgh, and history remained his first love, but in 1790 he was urged to accept the office of Judge Advocate of Scotland. It is said that he pleaded often, too often in the judgment of some, for a mitigation of punishment where the sentence of the Courts-martial appeared to him unnecessarily severe. His liberalism made him a number of enemies.

Before the year 1811 was at an end, Lord Polkemmet decided, to everyone’s great relief, including his own, to resign his gown and retire to his country estate. He was replaced by Robert Craigie, whose ability, many said, was as good a match to Polkemmet’s as could be found.

Therefore, when the Court of Session came to review Woods and Pirie against Dame Cumming Gordon in January 1812 the Second Division was constituted in this way: Lord Boyle (Lord Justice-Clerk), Lord Meadowbank, Lord Robertson, Lord Glenlee, Lord Gillies, Lord Woodhouselee, Lord Craigie. In the 1811 decision Lords Boyle and Meadowbank had found in favor of the plaintiffs; Lords Robertson and Glenlee had found in favor of the defendant. The 1812 decisions of all four were essentially the same as their earlier pronouncements.

LORD WOODHOUSELEE: This is the most painful question on which I have ever been called to form an opinion since I have sat as a Judge of this court. When the case came to be decided by your Lordships in a former stage of the proceedings, I sincerely congratulated myself that I was relieved from that disagreeable job. I most earnestly wish it were still in my power to escape from a duty so truly painful to the mind as that which my being transferred to this Division of the Court, in order to replace our Lord President Hope, has now imposed on me. But as that is impossible, I must prepare to discharge my duty in the best manner I can.

I believe that I have conscientiously tried to arrive at a sound and mature judgement in this case before us—and I am happy at least to think that the opinion I have formed is free from all manner of doubt, however much I may regret the consequence of that opinion to a person whom I sincerely esteem and value. She is a person whose worth I know, and with whose family and connections I myself and mine have been united by the bonds of friendship and personal regard for more than a generation.

If that respectable matron to whom I allude, and on whose side all my natural prejudices (if I were conscious of any in this case) must have lain,—if she erred, as I think she has grievously erred in this one unlucky exercise of her judgement, I am sure it was a virtuous error. It was an error proceeding from a worthy principle, and though it cannot be deemed venial, since its consequences were of so severe and cruel a nature, it had at least its origin in a mistaken sense of duty and in an earnest desire to do what she felt to be a moral obligation.

But, Gentlemen, I do not doubt that she did err, for, after examining everything that was placed at my disposal, it became painfully clear to me that it was the tainted imagination of Miss Cumming that furnished the shocking interpretation of events. It was her warm imagination, speculating on things upon which she had thought a great deal, and perhaps talked a great deal, without having distinct ideas about them. It was her fancy that first raised that phantom of an unnatural commerce, known perhaps in that Eastern climate from which she came, and talked of probably among the women whose discourse she had been accustomed to hear, but which in this part of the world is a thing unheard of,—a thing perhaps impossible. That this young woman’s mind was contaminated, that she was no stranger to those impure ideas which she had imbibed partly from her Eastern education, and partly perhaps from that precocity of temperament which she owed to an Eastern constitution,—that her mind, I say, was familiar to such ideas, we have proof from her own mouth, when she declares that the suspicion of some criminal intercourse between her mistresses arose from her own reflections, before she conversed with anybody on the subject. This was in answer to a shrewd question put to her, according to the transcripts, and it is apparent that she did not herself understand the significance of her response, or else we would not expect such an honest answer. The inference, however, is clear: her mind and imagination were familiar to such matters; the idea, which would never occur to a pure and uninstructed mind, occurs to her. It would never have occurred to such a mind as Miss Stirling’s. It had never occurred even to Miss Munro until Miss Cumming suggested it to her. To this young woman it occurred, as she admits herself, from her own reflections. And once having conceived this abominable idea, she construes everything she sees, every word she hears, every equivocal incident in those mysterious night visits (for mysterious they certainly must have been if the reason of them was unknown)—she construes everything, I say, into so many proofs of this shocking supposition which had entered her mind.

She probably had wrought herself into something like a belief in the criminality of her mistresses. She had reason, and a good reason too, for bearing them ill will. She had experienced little indulgence from them, because they did not think her conduct deserved it. She had been more frequently at fault, and more frequently disgraced and censured than any girl at school. She had had severe things said to her, things that were likely to stick and rankle in her mind. She, therefore, did not like her mistresses. She was tired of the school and was earnestly desirous of getting home to her grandmother’s, and of associating with her family, and of having her share in fashionable amusements with them. The bondage of the school was irksome to her. The discipline was too rigid for her. In one word, the mistresses had no high opinion of her, and she did not like them. This is human nature.

But still, I do not think so ill of her as to believe that she would have brought this horrid charge against them to her grandmother if she were conscious that it was altogether a falsehood of her own contrivance. And here I will state what I believe to have been the progress of Miss Cumming’s mind upon the subject. Counsel for the defense argues with great plausibility when he says that it is a most revolting supposition to conceive that a young girl of sixteen should invent such a diabolical plan as to bring about the utter ruin of two innocent women by means of a horrid fiction—and one which could not fail to bring herself and her family into the most distressing situation from that inquiry to which the charge would lead—an inquiry in which there was every probability that her own malice and falsehood would be fully detected, her own character destroyed, her grandmother’s favour forfeited, and which, in short, must lead to her own ruin. The answer to all this is, in the first place, that to Miss Cumming’s mind, the fact of such a lascivious commerce between persons of the same sex did not carry with it either the idea of impossibility or of that shocking criminality which it would have excited in the breast of a young girl born and educated in this country. And the mysterious circumstances which she observed may have actually led to a pretty strong suspicion that the fact with which she meant to charge them had some ground in reality.

But in the second place, Miss Cumming’s original intention was neither of so black and diabolical a nature as has been supposed, nor did she fear any of the dangers and consequences that I have mentioned. She neither meant to ruin these two poor women, nor did she in the least fear that she was to bring herself and her family into any distress by the scheme which she had formed. Her purpose and her plan (wicked enough as they were) went not one whit further than to accomplish her removal from the school that she so disliked, and to procure her the liberty and gratifications of fashionable life, which she longed to partake of. These, I firmly believe, were the sole objects she had in view.

But the greatest blame, Gentlemen, I must, to my very great regret, lay on Lady Cumming. Her motive, no doubt, was virtuous, and I give her all the credit that can be allowed her on the score. But her conduct was rash, inconsiderate, and cruel to these unhappy women. Lady Cumming may have acted in good faith. I doubt not she did. She believed what she was told. But she took no means to ascertain the truth of her information. Here, therefore, her conduct was negligent in the extreme. She scorned all idea of questioning the truth of her granddaughter’s story, however incredible, however shocking in itself, and however fatal in its consequence to those women of whose character she had thought so highly, and had had the best reasons for thinking so.

They were sacrificed at once, and their ruin sealed, without her even attempting to hear them in their own defence, without even acquainting them of their crime. If there was not malice in this conduct, there was a precipitancy and a culpable negligence, for which it is impossible to find excuse.

It is with the utmost pain, the most sincere regret, that I must add my opinion to those of your Lordships who are in favour of finding damages due, though I am not prepared to say to what extent the recompense should be. That must be matter for future consideration.

Woodhouselee, liberal as he allegedly was throughout his judicial career, obviously felt no need to hide his prejudice in this case. He knew that it would be shared by other respected members of the Court, that assumptions about the corruption of other races were acceptable bases for arriving at a verdict: the mistresses were innocent because in his part of the world lesbianism was “a thing unheard of,—a thing perhaps impossible.” Jane Cumming was undoubtedly the culprit, because it was “in that Eastern climate from which she came” that she must have learned of such “unnatural commerce” between women. It was through her “Eastern education” and her “Eastern constitution” that her mind was contaminated with impure ideas. Miss Munro and Miss Stirling would never have come to such conclusions without her. It was also her inferior moral heritage that made her unhesitant to tell such outrageous lies for the slight reason of wishing to be taken out of school. That she was supposedly one-half white and of the Scottish aristocracy, and that she had received the greatest part of her education on the Cumming Gordon estate and at a boarding school in Elgin, Woodhouselee overlooked.

“How convenient that Woodhouselee had a dark-skinned girl to explain how the specter of lesbianism could have emerged in this Scottish school for young ladies,” Ollie points out. “But what would we have done if it had been one of Lady Cumming Gordon’s legitimate, white granddaughters who made the accusations against the women?”

After several days in which I could locate nothing material to this case, I finally met with some success. Today I found a sketch of Mrs. Woods at the National Library. When we first arrived in Edinburgh I had hopes of locating pictures of all the principals, certainly of Dame Cumming Gordon and her grandchildren and the other wellborn young ladies at the school, since there was such an active enterprise in portrait painting of the wealthy in the early nineteenth century. But their likenesses all seem to have vanished. Aside from sketches of the judges and the lawyers, I could find nothing, until today.

The picture is a treasure: it is a 1784 sketch with the most famous actress of her day, Mrs. Siddons, at the center. Mrs. Siddons is in costume, on stage, in the play Douglas. On her right is the actor Mr. Sutherland; on her left, the actress Ann Woods, looking exactly as I had imagined her to look. She is very posed. She is also tiny compared to the majestic Mrs. Siddons. Perhaps her size in this picture only reflects the artist’s notion of the unimportance of her role, but I always thought of her as being just that small and just that artificially theatrical despite her small stature. Her face, I am sure, is captured faithfully. Her chin recedes, as it should in a caricature of a weak personality, and her forehead is round and large and stubborn: a passive-aggressive type. Her eyes are veiled. Perhaps I see in this sketch a secret sensuality and self-indulgence only because of what I already know of her, but I think she could not look otherwise and play the role she has in my drama.

I wish I understood Marianne’s attachment to her better than I do. I can imagine how very little Jane Pirie must have understood it. Jane must have looked at Mrs. Woods and seen only a selfish and grasping old woman. To Marianne, her aunt may have been the only spot of warmth in her adolescence, her Executive Director, perhaps—and as a young woman with a strong, if not rigid, sense of responsibility, Marianne could probably not allow herself now to neglect what she saw as just payment on her debt. If Mrs. Woods had no place to go and no means of support, of course Marianne would have to take her in, and not only provide for her, but help her to a respectable occupation if she desired one—just as Mrs. Woods and her husband once did for Marianne. Jane Pirie, never having labored under a debt of gratitude (since she always envisioned herself as embattled and unbefriended by anyone but her God—and perhaps Marianne), could not bear Marianne’s solicitude toward her aunt.

“Has it occurred to you that maybe Marianne and her aunt set Jane Pirie up?” my ever cynical love asks.

I confess it has occurred to me, since I am as paranoid as Jane no doubt was. I am reminded that paranoids have enemies too.

Ollie has already worked out “what probably happened”: Mrs. Woods could never approve of the friendship between Jane and Marianne, and she told her niece so. Miss Pirie was crass in her manners, cross in her disposition, not a proper lady at all. Mrs. Woods also told her niece that she considered Marianne’s intention to form a partnership with that creature sheer lunacy. But Marianne demonstrated that she knew what she was doing.

A short while before Jane’s proposal, Marianne had lost two students in one week. It had become hard going for her and her aunt. How much longer could they tolerate living on the sad pittance that Marianne earned as a day teacher, two guineas for twelve lessons, panicking lest she lose a student or two, which meant they would have to skip a meal or two until she found other students to make up for the diminished revenue? And no matter how many hours she worked she could never hope to earn much better than a subsistence. There was no future in it. If she took a job as a governess somewhere, her aunt would be left alone, and they would still have the expense of keeping up the flat. How could they improve their lot?

“We will go into business for ourselves,” the aunt declared.

Marianne saw how impractical that was. They had no money with which to start a business—they barely had enough to put bread on the table. And what else did she know but teaching?

Then Jane Pirie said that Marianne and she must open a school of their own, and Jane Pirie had the wherewithall to do it.

“But how will you be able to work with her?” the aunt asked. “She has the grace and couth of a herring seller. Who would send their daughters to be taught by her?”

“She is very intelligent, Aunt. And she has met with great success as a governess. Anyway, she would not join the school immediately. She will need to finish out her agreement with the Campbell family, and she will not be free for almost half a year. I will open the school and get the students. I will establish everything. You will help me. You will be the housekeeper—or the business manager, if you like. And who knows what will happen in half a year. In any case, the tone and atmosphere of the school will be set then.”

Perhaps Marianne did not really mean to defraud her friend. But whatever heat she may have once felt for her had long since cooled (not to be revived until the summer of 1810). Marianne simply saw the way to a fuller life before her, and Jane Pirie was willing to provide the vehicle by which Marianne might travel that road. Marianne had neither the desire nor the inclination just then to look very far down the path to the point at which Jane stood there awaiting her. As for Mrs. Woods, six months was as good as a lifetime. Who could know where any one of them might be in six months? She and her niece would open the school, and perhaps Jane Pirie would marry or die before the time came for her to join them.

“Maybe,” I say, “but I doubt it. Mrs. Woods may have had a hidden agenda, but I am sure that her niece did not. I think that Marianne believed at least that she loved Jane as much as Jane loved her. What Mrs. Woods saw as Jane’s lack of polish, Marianne saw as her forcefulness and honesty. She admired her energetic confidence in dealing with the world. When Jane wanted something, she put everything into getting it. Nothing would stop her. It was a divine monomania that awed Marianne, all the more because she knew she did not possess it.

“I am sure they both entered into their bargain in the best faith. I doubt that even Mrs. Woods had larceny in her heart. She was silly and self-indulgent, but not thieving. Things went awry not because of anyone’s malicious intent, but because the wrong mix of personalities came together.”

“The beauty of this case, my darling,” Ollie says, “is that you can believe of it whatever you wish to believe.”

The pleas that have been urged are twofold: 1. The good faith of the defendant when she made the statements on which this suit is founded; and 2. The truth of those statements.

As to the first plea, it was clearly her duty to communicate the information to those persons to whom she had previously recommended the mistresses as being well qualified to take charge of children. She did this in good faith, having belief and confidence in the veracity of her granddaughter, who had never, in any essential degree, deviated from the truth.

As to the second plea, the truth of what the defendant had asserted against the plaintiffs: that, it seems to me has been well proven by the evidence. What has been sworn in this court would not only convince an individual like the defendant herself, but also the conscience of a Judge.

In the laws of most countries, and particularly in those of England, the testimony of Miss Munro, who seems to me to be a witness of unquestionable credit, would have been sufficient by it self to prove any crime of which the plaintiffs could be guilty. Her testimony, from what I could see in the transcripts, is indisputably clear, precise and positive with regard to the plaintiffs’ gross indecencies. It is vain to assert that she was misled and deceived by Miss Cumming. She swears to circumstances which fell directly under her own observation, and which must render the plaintiffs unworthy of a place in the society of virtuous and modest women. And, although in Scotland it is held that the evidence of one witness, without anything else, is not sufficient to prove a criminal act, we do not require two witnesses swearing directly to the same act. One witness of full credit, if supported by collateral evidence, whether arising from the conduct of the accused parties or establishing circumstances previous or subsequent to the act that would show it was likely committed, will be enough. And here there is corroborative evidence of all the kinds I have mentioned.

In addition to this, if any addition were necessary, we have the evidence of Miss Cumming. A great deal has been said, and in my opinion far too much, with regard to this young lady. But I do not see that she is to be considered as a false or perjured witness. As to the material facts, all of which are confirmed by Miss Munro, I have not the least distrust of her testimony. Even if her evidence had not been taken, however, it seems to me that the rest of the testimony is such that I, both as a man and a Judge, must believe it.

On the whole, therefore, it appears to me that the decision of this court which was made last year ought to be affirmed, and that the defendant ought to be acquitted.

LORD GILLIES: It appears to me that the major question in this case centers on whether or not Miss Marianne Woods and Miss Jane Pirie are guilty of indecent carnal knowledge of each other. I have perused the transcripts with great care, and I cannot believe they are. Matters not only perfectly innocent and natural, but perfectly common and, I may almost say universal in this country, are there presented as presumptions of guilt. The defendant’s evidence tries to lead your Lordships to believe that whenever two young women form a friendship together, and that friendship ripens into intimacy, if ever they venture to share the same bed, that becomes a proof of guilt. What are we to think of this? Are we to say that every woman who has formed an intimate friendship and has slept in the same bed with another is guilty? Where is the innocent woman in Scotland?—If any such is known to your Lordships, she is not known to me, whose friendships do not ripen into intimacies which would permit her to sleep in the same bed with her friend when necessary.

I ask, in the case of women in their rank of life, is it not the natural and uniform practice to partake of the same bed? I am sure that I am not altogether ignorant of the manners of this country. I cannot think or admit that it furnishes any presumption against the plaintiffs because they formed a friendship of great warmth and they sometimes slept in the same bed together. These are the natural presumptions of innocence in my mind.

In like manner, the defendant’s counsel has presented the whole conduct of the plaintiffs as suspicious, though I think their conduct was always accounted for by the circumstances. They visited each other at night because they had no opportunity of meeting together in the day time, when they were constantly occupied. These visits being paid, it was natural that they should invite each other into bed if no fire was going in the room, so this is no circumstance of suspicion. God forbid that that time should ever arrive when a lady in Scotland, standing at the side of another’s bed in the night time, should be suspected of guilt because she was invited into it.

It is said that they tried to conceal their visits. I have no doubt of that. Whether they went to each other’s bedsides with the infamous motives that have been imputed to them, or whether they went there on account of school business, it was natural that they should wish to conceal it. It is not a creditable thing that such business should have been necessary, which it was, on account of their quarrels. I may be told that even that was an indecency; but if they were not moved by the passion of lust in paying these visits, I say it was merely indecorum, which did not, in the slightest degree, justify the accusation against them.

I will not say much more as to the improbability of the charge, because that was fully dwelt upon formerly. But it does appear to me very improbable, if not incredible, in a moral point of view. I don’t mean to deny that the existence of the crime has been alleged before now, and perhaps believed. But such reports and such belief do not in my mind prove its existence. I am happy to express my belief that to this moment, no such crime was ever known in Scotland or in Britain. I do believe that the crime here alleged has no existence.

But there is still another difficulty that the defendant has not sifted, and I put the question now: Is it more improbable that Miss Cumming should have invented the story or that the plaintiffs should have been guilty of the crime? Which is the most improbable of the two? For your Lordships are forced to make a choice. Whether it is more improbable that this girl from India should have invented such a charge, or that the mistresses should have committed this crime? I have no hesitation in saying that it is infinitely the most improbable of the two that the mistresses should have done it. And with all the inconsistencies in Miss Cumming’s evidence, I have no hesitation in saying that I reject it altogether. I am sorry for it, respectably connected as she is.

Nothing then remains but the evidence of Miss Munro, for I will not dignify with the name of evidence the testimonies of Mary Brown and Miss Stirling. Miss Munro’s mind was in a morbid state. She was worked on by the superior address of another, and she appears to me to be rather of a weak mind to begin with. Now, my Lords, what does she swear to? She saw one person come to the bed of another, both females,—the one asks the other to come into bed; and Miss Munro thinks that a proof of guilt. If her mind had not been perverted, how could she possibly have thought so? I ask, what would have been her impression if her mind had not been perverted? I say that if it had not, she would have forgot the whole circumstance within twenty-four hours.

I think what she says of the day time kissing and caressing is proof of what I say. That was not seen by her alone, but by every girl in the school—yet not one of them thought it more than ordinary female friendship, except Miss Munro. If this is not proof of her mind having been corrupted by Miss Cumming, I don’t know what would be so.

I cannot get over it. I believe Miss Munro to be a true witness. I have not the least suspicion of her veracity. But I believe that her mind was distempered, that it was filled and abused with erroneous impressions,—that she was in the situation of Othello, so well described by Shakespeare. And Miss Cumming was to her Iago.

I believe there is nothing more to say, except that I am very sorry for the consequences to Lady Cumming Gordon. But that does not in the smallest degree weaken the opinion I have formed as to the merits of this case, and as to the judgement which this Court should pronounce.

So on February 26, 1812, the Court ordered Dame Helen Cumming Gordon to pay damages to the plaintiffs because her actions had deprived them of their livelihood and the reputations on which their livelihood depended. Marianne and Jane must have felt a bittersweet vindication. They must have celebrated, at least in their hearts. But after the horror and terror of the preceding fifteen months, could they have celebrated together? Now they no longer had the romantic friends’ privilege of unselfconsciousness. Now they knew (whether or not they had known before), as well as women in our century know, that love between females may be more, or other than, an effusion of the spirit—and if it is, society’s ire can be a swift sword. Heaped upon all their earlier trouble, could this terrible knowledge have permitted them to remain together without shame and anger?

Nor did their problems end there. According to the forty-eighth volume of The Laws of King George III, chapter 151, paragraph 15, as of July 4, 1808, “appeals to the House of Lords shall be allowed where there is a difference of opinion among the judges of the said Division.” The judges had voted 4 to 3 against Lady Cumming Gordon, as narrow a margin as had before voted in her favor. Her appeal, represented by all the printed testimony, speeches, and other documents, was sent off to London to be heard in the House of Lords.

In Bleak House, which was written forty years later, Charles Dickens depicts people grown old and broken as they waited, sometimes sixty years, for their cases to be settled in the English courts. He exaggerated only somewhat. Miss Woods and Miss Pirie must have been aware of the notorious inefficiencies of the English court system. They may have been confident that the House of Lords would decide in their favor, just as the Court of Session finally did, and that they would be awarded enough money on which to live out their days. But there was no way of anticipating when the decision of the House would be forthcoming, and in the interim they had to find a way to eat.

The only work they knew was teaching. Word of the suit and the reasons behind it must have spread quickly among the upper classes. Probably there were few families who could afford to hire a governess who would not have known of Lady Cumming Gordon and her travail. How could the mistresses hope to find work if they stayed in Edinburgh?

What they should have done, of course—what Ollie and I agree we would have done once it became apparent that the suit would be dragged out for years—is taken each other’s hand and run off, to England, Ireland, America, the Continent, anywhere. But I think we could do that because no matter who might tell us we are unnatural or wicked, we know that we love each other and (ironic thanks to the sexologists) that sex is natural to love. We know with an unshakable conviction that we are right. But no matter what had been the nature of Marianne and Jane’s love for each other, after those months in court they could have had no unshakable convictions about its rightness anymore. Perhaps the girls’ accusations were true. If that were so, even if the women hadn’t understood before with what utter disgust their society would view sex between females, after being made to sit through the testimony and the judges’ speeches, they could never again escape from the blast of that knowledge. How could they ever again make love without hearing those horrible courtroom words? It would have been no better if the accusations were lies. They would now be suspicious themselves of every gentle look, every soft touch or kiss that passed between them.

Ollie says that the difference between us and them is that we have spent all our adult years battling our society’s silly notions about what we are, and the fight has made us strong. The mistresses never had to fight. Their moral muscles were puny, and they would have been felled by the first blow. But I believe that a more important difference is that we know we are not alone—all the people who really matter to us understand what we are to each other, and we have scores of friends like us. If the mistresses really were lovers, there would have been no one in the world they dared to tell. They would have felt entirely isolated. The first attack would have shattered them. And they would have known that in order to gather forces to help them fight off the attack, they would have had to lie about what they meant to each other.

So they did not run off together. Marianne Woods and her aunt went to London, where Marianne begged of the friends she had made at Camden House Academy and was finally hired to come in a couple of hours a day to teach literature. It probably had been in her mind since the suit began that she might have to call on friends outside of Edinburgh, and it was for that reason that she did not ask them to write a character for her, even though her lawyer must have told her it would help her case to produce good references.

Jane Pirie remained in Edinburgh and sought a position. Probably she brought to her quest a sort of bitter, ironic stubbornness, such as one might have who believed that the world was made up of malicious numbskulls, and it was her job to show them their uncharitableness and ignorance, no matter if it killed her. Of course she found nothing, and it is doubtful that her brooding presence raised Edinburgh to an awareness of its deficiencies.

She lived in a small flat, first with a maid and then by herself, until her savings ran out. In 1813 she moved back with her father to Lady Stairs Close, into the flat where she had grown up. How could she have kept the story of her tragedy from him? And if she told him, what words could she have used to describe it? Would he have believed in her innocence, or would he have believed that God does not allow the innocent to suffer, that if she was suffering she could not be entirely without guilt?

She was bereft of everything. She had lost her money, her name, her profession, and worst of all, her beloved friend, whom she probably now saw as more treacherous than all her enemies together. She was not yet thirty. Can so young a life really stop with such finality even while one keeps living? Most people today have several lives. If the job does not work out, if the spouse or lover fails us or dies, we try another. People were not so flexible in 1812.

When the House of Lords agreed to hear an appeal in the early nineteenth century, neither the principals nor their witnesses were permitted to appear before that august body. The transcripts of all the previous proceedings of the case were forwarded to the House of Lords, and counsel for both parties again presented their position, either orally or in writing, generally on the basis of the contents of the transcripts. The counsel was usually a London attorney who was in consultation with the original lawyer on the case, since it would have been difficult in those days of uncertain court schedules and inefficient transportation for an attorney outside of London to be available when the House of Lords was ready for him.

The plaintiff and the defendant in a case had nothing more to do but hope.

The transcripts of Woods and Pirie against Dame Cumming Gordon were forwarded to the London attorneys after some slight difficulty. John Clerk and George Cranstoun requested the forwarding on April 14, 1812. The Court of Session postponed consideration of their request until May 21, 1812, but finally agreed that the transcripts must be forwarded, stipulating that the attorneys would submit receipts for the transcripts, employ them only as the House of Lords instructed, and give assurances that “the uses to which counsel applies the transcripts shall be proper and suitable to the precaution against publicity adopted by the Court in this case.”

James Chalmers of Westminster, who was the attorney for many of the titled in London, conducted the appeal for Lady Cumming Gordon. He submitted an Appeal Notice to the House of Lords on March 17, 1812. Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie were notified to respond to it in writing on or before April 28, 1812, and Chalmers was informed that he would be asked to present his case before the Lords upon receipt of Woods and Pirie’s response. But since the transcripts had not yet arrived by the end of April, Chalmers asked for a delay in the date when he was to be scheduled to present the case. The delay was approved. It is not clear when the transcripts finally arrived in London, but both parties remained silent until December 1, 1812, when James Campbell, a London attorney whom the mistresses had obtained through the help of John Clerk, submitted an Answer to the Appeal Notice. The House then ordered that the case be heard “on the first vacant day for cases after those already appointed.”

More than three years later, at the beginning of 1816, the House of Lords had still not made a move to hear the case. The mistresses’ attorney submitted this petition to the House:

That it is of the greatest importance to the Respondents.—Both parties are prepared, and since the counsel on both sides will be under the necessity of attending their circuits in fourteen days hence, the Respondents, who can ill afford taking other counsel, and who labour under great disadvantages until the case is heard, humbly Pray that this case, which stands in the rolls above those now in hearing, may be appointed to be heard on Monday, the 4th day of March, or on such other early day as your Lordships shall be pleased to appoint.

There is a most extraordinary appeal set down to be argued at the Bar of the House of Lords. The appellant is Lady Cumming Gordon against Miss Woods and Miss Pirie, respondents. The latter two ladies kept a female boarding school in Edinburgh, and, by propagation of a scandalous story, their establishment was, in one day, totally ruined. They brought action in the Court of Session against Lady Cumming Gordon for defamation. The story was of such a nature as to induce the Lords to swear all the agents and parties to secrecy, although, by the practice of the Court of Session, the papers of the case were printed. A judgement was pronounced in March 1812 against Lady Cumming Gordon for damages and costs, and the young ladies were allowed to prove the amount of their damages. Against the decree Lady Cumming Gordon appeals. The case in the House of Lords, as in the Court of Session, will be heard with shut doors.

But if the mistresses were relieved to think they were near the end of this tortuous ordeal, they were precipitous. On March 4, 1816, James Chalmers, Lady Cumming Gordon’s London attorney, petitioned the House of Lords to delay their hearing of the case. “This is a case of a very singular and delicate nature,” he wrote them, “and the Appellant conceives and is advised that it is not stated in the complete way it ought to have been on her part in the printed transcript delivered to the House, which was hastily prepared.” He asked that the Lordships give his client leave to submit any additional arguments as may be thought proper, and, of course, that the mistresses “be given opportunity then to put in any additional arguments on their part if they think right.” His petition was granted on March 12, 1816.

I surprise myself: I had always disliked the bullying little Mary Tilford character that I played as a twelve-year-old, and I despised Jane Cumming when I first encountered her. But now that I have seen her intimidating “ancestral home” and have considered her life in India and in Scotland, I think I understand why she would be bitter or revengeful or anything. Whether she was a liar or only an unwilling observer in this drama, I have almost as much sympathy for her as for my two ladies.

I have been able to find nothing more about her. She never appears in the Edinburgh Postal Directory; there is no record of her marriage or death in the Scottish Record Office; her grave is in none of the cemeteries around Gordonstoun or Altyre or Forres, where her grandmother is buried.

Ollie says, facetiously I hope, that we need to go to Patna or Bengal and search for her there. But I am sure she never returned to India. She would have been even more a stranger in India, despite her looks, than in Britain. What did she have left there? Her mother and grandfather had given her up, conceded that their claim on her was insignificant if an Anglo was willing to recognize her. And what would she have had to say to them after living all those years in an Anglo world, learning to think as Anglos thought, despising the East as they did? I do not think one just sloughs off that sort of childhood indoctrination. But even if she did, in what language would she have been able to communicate in India? I stopped speaking the language of my immigrant mother when I was six years old, and it is not my language anymore. I barely understand it. English must have become her language as much as it has become mine. India would have been only the dimmest memory to her, just as my birthplace is to me.

But I do not believe that she could have made a life for herself in Britain either. The others all might have kept on with their lives. It would not have been easy, certainly, but it would have been possible. Marianne Woods managed to function well enough, although she had to leave Edinburgh to find a job. Jane Pirie probably never functioned well after the school broke up, but if she had been more flexible, less bitter, truly strong, as I think she once appeared to be to Marianne, she would have been able to pick up the shards of her life and reassemble them, just as Marianne apparently did. Lady Cumming Gordon, if she finally came to see the women as innocent, must have believed herself an old fool or, if she continued to think they were guilty, must have been embittered toward the legal fools who betrayed her. But she was sheltered by her scores of children and grandchildren and her money. She would have been scarred but essentially all right in the end.

Jane Cumming could never have been all right again. Most of the Cumming Gordon family were not fond of her to begin with. After this, they must have loathed her. She had caused Lady Cumming Gordon grief and embarrassment, not to mention a good deal of money. Whether she was a liar or merely jinxed, one of those doomed always to suffer and be damned, she was trouble to everyone around her. I would guess that in the midst of all those court battles, at least some members of the family must have tried to persuade Lady Cumming Gordon to ship her back to India and be done with her.

I think, however, the good Lady would have been prevented from doing that by her religious superstitions if nothing else. Yet how could she have lived with the girl? And how could she love her? Even if she continued to want to believe in Jane Cumming’s veracity, surely she must have had some twinges of doubt, and that must have strained her feelings of charity toward the creature who had meant little but anxiety and trouble for her from the very beginning.

Jane Cumming must have resided with Lady Cumming Gordon after the school was closed, since it seems to have been almost impossible for the former scholars to get accepted into another reputable school, and she, having been more central to the scandal than the other girls, would have had even more difficulty than they. How uncomfortable the daily encounters with her grandmother must have been. Even if the grandmother claimed to continue to believe, Jane would have realized that the woman had moments of doubt and that she resented her during those moments.

Did she marry? Would her husband have known the story and always wondered, if he believed it, whether she hadn’t been corrupted by what she saw in her bed when she was a very young woman? But I do not think she married. I think that the tale spread everywhere among the small aristocracy of Scotland, and that this scandal, coupled with her dark skin and illegitimacy, meant the end of her as a social being.

I think when she came of age Lady Cumming Gordon gave her a small legacy and cast her out, and she lived loveless and friendless. How could she have been anything other than miserable? She had been spoiled by great expectations—even though they may always have been unrealistic. She was petulant and lazy; she had been made luxurious and snobbish—all very unpromising characteristics for a stranger with a small legacy and no skills and no friends.

But as despicable as I think she probably was, I see her as a victim from the start, and a victim of everything I hate most in our civilization: the stigma attached to “illegitimacy,” the prejudices of the master race, the privileges of wealth that permit the wealthy to buy people and to use them as pawns. Of course I am rankled by the outrages the mistresses had to endure—and I am angry with Jane Cumming because she was the direct cause of their ruin. But I feel the injustice she suffered almost as much as I feel theirs.

Finally, on July 9, 1819, the House of Lords ordered that “the case wherein Dame Helen Cumming Gordon is Appellant and Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie are Respondents be taken into consideration Monday next.”

The following Monday, after a brief discussion of the appeal, the House of Lords issued this terse statement: “It is ordered and adjudged by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled that the Petition and Appeal be hereby dismissed from this House, and that the said judgement of the Court of Session therein complained of be hereby affirmed.”

The London News for Sunday, July 18, 1819, reported the speech of the Lord Chancellor:

My lords, this is a case in which I would take the liberty to move your Lordships to give judgement without saying much upon it. It is the case Woods and Pirie v. Lady Cumming Gordon, a case of a very singular nature, and perhaps of such a nature that the less it is discussed publicly the better. My Lords, in the first instance the Court of Session by their decision held that her Ladyship was liable for damages to the ladies who complained. My Lords, upon as attentive a consideration as I have been able to give the circumstances of that case, it does not appear to me that there is any error in the judgement of the Court of Session. However, the extent of the damages which ought to be paid is a matter for future consideration, which will require a very temperate and a very prudent deliberation, regard being had to all the circumstances which occur in the case. But I do not think, whatever difference of opinion there might be about the amount of damages, that it is possible to say that this is a case in which she is not liable for damages to some extent; and if she is liable for damages to any extent, it seems to me that the decision of the Court of Session ought to be affirmed. I beg, therefore, to move your Lordships that the judgement be affirmed.