Scotland's Hidden Harlots & Heroines

Rediscover Scottish history through the eyes of its most unique and outspoken women in this volume of entertaining tales from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.

Annie Harrower-Gray introduces readers to three centuries of rebellious, innovative, and downright scandalous Scottish women. The whole of society appears, from ordinary laborers, prostitutes and factory hands to their more celebrated sisters and even witches, bodysnatchers, and female Jacobites. The tales of these colorful characters are freshly researched and engagingly told.

Step inside the boudoirs of Edinburgh’s ladies of pleasure, whose civilized manners so confused one church minister that he ‘accidentally’ took tea in a brothel. Creep into the graveyard with Helen Torrance and Jean Lapiq, convicted of bodysnatching half a century before Burke and Hare. Uncover the murky history of Scotland’s last witch Helen Duncan, whose eerily accurate wartime predictions led to her imprisonment. This book offers an exciting and erudite voyage through the social history of Scotland.