The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10‪)‬

Miss Pirie and Miss Woods v. Dame Cumming Gordon (1983), by Lillian Faderman (author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers), recounts the historical incident[1] on which Hellman based her play. In 1810 in Edinburgh, Scotland, a pupil named Jane Cumming accused her schoolmistresses, Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods, of having an affair in the presence of their pupils. Dame Cumming Gordon, the accuser's influential grandmother, advised her friends to remove their daughters from the boarding school. Within days the school was deserted and the two women had lost their livelihood. Pirie and Woods sued and eventually won, both in court and on appeal, but given the damage done to their lives, their victory was considered hollow.


In Joshua Waletzky's 1999 film "Dashiell Hammett. Detective. Writer", the narration offers that "Hammett had the idea for the play, and edited it, and helped make Hellman into a writer".