In the last few months of the school's existence, the two teachers were talking about breaking up, professionally and personally. However, eight years after the initial appeal, Moncreiff stated that “so great was the success which had attended their exertions, that they had come to the determination of taking a larger house against the following term of Whitsuntide, and of taking an increased number both of boarders and day scholars.” Like so many statements passed off as truth during the case, this one appears to be a deliberate misrepresentation, crafted to implicitly call attention to the failure of their high hopes and their current state of near-indigence.

The case took more of a toll on Jane Pirie than on Marianne Woods. In 1820 Moncreiff averred that Marianne had friends who enabled her “to earn a very scanty subsistence for herself and a near relative,” presumably her aunt. After the breakup of the school, Jane Pirie gave lessons two or three times a week for an hour or more to a Miss Anstruther, one of the former pupils, but by 1820 Moncreiff claimed that her working days were behind her. Though not without friends, she was “totally ruined … entirely disabled from employing whatever talents she may possess, and the acquirements of many years, either for her profit or for her bare sustenance” and had run up some debts. These “debts” may be connected to another court case she became involved in. Sadly, it pitted Jane against her sister Margaret and Margaret's husband, Thomas Ferguson.

Pirie v. Fergusons, which can be dated to December 18, 1819, had to do with a substantial and valuable piece of property in Gladstone's Land, very close to Lady Stair's Close, where Jane Pirie had grown up. It had originally belonged to Jane and Margaret's aunt, Euphemia Rixon, who had divided it between two of her nieces, Jane Pirie and another sister, also named Euphemia, in 1809. According to Jane, in October 1814, Margaret, who had not been given any land, pressured Jane into giving over her share of the property. Euphemia died in 1815 and left Margaret her share.