this deserves its own post
so, The Children’s Hour, right? famous 1930s play that became a 1960s movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. two young headmistresses of a school have their lives ruined when a disgruntled student spreads a rumor that they’re lovers. it’s super well-known
but what you might not know is that it’s based on a real court case
and the real story is wild
in 1809, Scottish schoolmistresses Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods filed a libel suit against Lady Cumming Gordon, grandmother of their former student Jane Cumming. Lady Gordon had spread a rumor begun by her granddaughter that Misses Pirie and Woods were a couple, and their school subsequently lost nearly all its pupils. so far, basically the same events as TCH
but real life diverges on a few key points:
1. Jane Cumming was 15 years old, a biracial girl born out of wedlock to a British officer and an Indian woman (the relationship was apparently consensual, but her parents never did marry)
2. She had initially been excluded from her father’s lofty social circle until her grandmother had a dream that she should be legitimized into the family, sent for her, and enrolled her in Pirie’s and Woods’ school for young ladies
3. Her vendetta against her teachers began when one was racist towards her- okay, yeah, anyone would be rightfully angry there -and the other rejected her romantic advances
4. Yep, the kid in the real-life Children’s Hour case was also queer
5. Pirie and Woods won the case, but only because the court was super-racist and argued that no such thing happened in the U.K. They believed Cumming must have learned about such Depravity™ in her native India
6. Jane Cumming went on to marry a clergyman named Tulloch, who had a habit of walking out with young, unmarried ladies. This resulted in a public mudslinging match, with Jane trying unsuccessfully to legally separate from him. She eventually settled for publicizing his behavior and, when the church they belonged to split, joining the opposite side of the schism along with their children
7. Oh, and the teachers were actually a couple. Though probably not guilty of the specific sexual accusations leveled against them, namely that they had sex in the bed one of them shared with Jane Cumming, while Cumming was in it
(there’s a book about Jane Cumming, but regrettably it’s quite expensive)
so yeah. that all happened, and probably wouldn’t have been allowed as a movie in the 1960s
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