Jane Cumming

Jane Cumming m. Tulloch (1795/6 – 24 April 1844) was a witness in a libel suit made famous in the Lillian Hellman play, The Children's Hour.

Biography Jane Cumming was the daughter of George Cumming, a writer working for the East India Company, and an unknown Indian mother. He was the eldest son of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Penrose Cumming, 1st Baronet of Gordonstoun and Altyre.

Jane married William Tulloch, a schoolmaster, in 1818. At the time of her marriage, her grandmother had settled 700 pounds on her. Jane and William had three children, George Cumming, Charles Lennox and Eliza Maria Campbell, named for Jane's father, uncle and aunt, and two other children who died in infancy; William Gordon and Helen Grant Cumming Tulloch, named for Jane's grandmother. On Saturday 10 November 1810, Cumming went to her grandmother's home at 22 Charlotte Square, Jane was the first pupil to be removed from the school, although all the others left within days.

In 1811, Woods and Pirie sued Jane's grandmother, Lady Helen Cumming Gordon for libel. Jane gave testimony in the case, Nine years later the case reached the House of Lords, where they ruled in favour of Woods and Pirie, as the accusations were 'not proven'.

The story of the court case was the inspiration for Lillian Hellman's 1934 play The Children's Hour and a later film version The Children's Hour in 1961, directed by William Wyler, which set the story in the United States and starred Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner as well as These Three in 1936 which starred Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon and Joel McCrea.