After writing one unsuccessful play with Louis Kronenberger, Hellman wrote "The Children's Hour" as an exercise, to teach herself how to write a play. Believing that she would do better to find a subject based in fact, Dashiell Hammett suggested the idea for the play to Hellman after he read a book titled "Bad Companions" (1930), a true-crime anthology by William Roughead. It related an incident that took place in 1810 at a school in Edinburgh, Scotland. A student 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.