City guide

to Edinburgh’s Sapphic Scandal

Edinburgh's Sapphic Scandal From India to Scotland, follow in the footsteps of Edinburgh’s infamous sapphic scandal. Explore the New Town and Old Town through this early 19th-century legal case. Uncover the people, places, and prejudices that shaped the city. By Indigo Dunphy-Smith
1. Drumsheugh Gardens In 1809 teachers Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods opened a boarding school on the edge of Edinburgh’s New Town. They had met in a drawing class ten years earlier and quickly become close. This new venture was a chance for them to build a respectable life together. owever, tensions grew at the school as the relationship between the teachers deteriorated. The strain of this conflict was often expressed through harsh discipline, frequently directed at one of their students, Jane Cumming. 2. Robert Dundas Statue Jane Cumming, born to a North Indian mother in Patna, was brought to Scotland by her Ayah to be with her grandmother after her father died. She was enrolled at the teachers school just a year after it opened.
3. No. 22 Charlotte Square In retaliation to the ongoing bullying, Jane visited her grandmother at her house and accused the teachers of “sapphic vices”. Within 48 hours, the school was empty. 4. No. 28 Charlotte Square Their reputations destroyed, Woods and Pirie brought a case of defamation before the Court of Session. One of the lawyers involved lived just across the road from Jane’s grandmother. The teachers hired John Clerk to represent them. A formidable advocate known for speaking his mind in a thick Scots accent, he never married and kept six cats. 5. No. 128 Princes Street In the 1980s, Lavender Menace, Scotland’s first queer book shop sold books out of the coat check when this address was Fire Island, Scotland’s first gay disco. They had their stock shipped under the names of Miss Pirie and Miss Woods to avoid indecency laws. This included Scotch Verdict by Lillian Faderman.
6. Scott Monument The lawyers involved in the case believed “if a woman embraces a woman, it infers nothing.” It is this mindset that allowed relationships between women to survive. As a celebratory gift for the opening of the school, Pirie gifted Woods a copy of Anna Seward’s Poetical Works (1810) edited by Walter Scott. It included her iconic poem "Llangollen Vale" (1796) which celebrated two women who set up home together in Wales. 7. Gladstone’s Land Before the case concluded, Woods and Pirie, traumatised by the trial, went their separate ways. Woods returned to London where she was born, eventually securing a part-time job as a teacher. Pirie remained in Edinburgh and was later involved in two more court cases relating to a flat she inherited in Gladstone’s Land. Neither woman ever married.
8. Court of Session As the case unfolded, the lawyers debated the evidence. This included producing an extensive list of historical references to sexual passion between women. They titled this Authorities with Regard to the Practice of Tribadism - using the 18th-century term, from the Greek “tribein”, meaning “to rub.” Their case notes reveal not only shock and moral outrage, but also curiosity, shaped and intensified by the colonial pseudo-scientific medical theories of the time. 9. St Giles Cathedral A year before the case was closed, Jane Cumming married, and the couple settled in Elgin, where her new husband became the church minister. Their marriage was unhappy. Jane believed he was unfaithful and, after being refused a separation, once again sought revenge through public humiliation. Jane joined the Free Church of Scotland while her husband remained with the Church of Scotland. This was a public rejection of him and her family.
Set against the backdrop of Edinburgh, the events that unfolded among the students, lawyers, teachers, and the elite were all influenced by the social and economic forces of their time. They show us how those involved were constrained by the discriminatory structures of the time, while also, in different ways, participated in sustaining them. The story exposes a dense web of power relations shaped by orientalism, sexual fantasy, and social control. Racism, homophobia, age, gender, and class also all intersect. Further Reading Scotch Verdict by Lillian Faderman (1983) Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland by Frances B. Singh (2020) Bad Companions by William Roughead (1930) The Children’s Hour (script) by Lillian Hellman (1934)