TWO brothers who operated a brothel in an Edinburgh sauna parlour have been jailed at the city's sheriff court.

Adrian McPherson, 40, was sentenced to nine months; his brother William, 42, to six months; and a third accused, a woman who held the sauna licence, Lindsey Reid, was fined #500.

Adrian McPherson, of Bonkle Road, Newmains, Lanarkshire, Wishaw, and William McPherson, of Don Drive, Livingston, West Lothian, had both admitted living off the earnings of prostitution and managing a brothel in the premises at Lothian Road, Edinburgh, known as the Penthouse Sauna.

Reid, also of Bonkle Road, pled guilty to failing to comply with a licence to run a sauna.

Pleas of not guilty by the two men to procuring two 15-year-old girls to have unlawful sexual intercourse in the sauna were accepted by the court. The case had been continued for background reports.

Fiscal Gillian More told a previous hearing police cracked down on the business when the two 15-year-olds admitted working there. The girls are now 16.

Mr Maurice Smythe, defending Adrian McPherson, said the police had known the Penthouse Sauna operated as a brothel for a long time.

The operation, he said, provided a ''safe, comfortable, and benign haven for prostitutes and kept the trade off the streets. He added that ''an accommodation had evolved'' in Edinburgh in the form of licensed saunas and that other cities were taking note of Edinburgh's ''enlightened'' approach.

Passing sentence, Sheriff Mhairi Stephen said she had noted the lengthy plea in mitigation made by Mr Smythe and the background reports, but told the men they had been well aware of the illegality of what was happening in the Penthouse Sauna.

''It seems to me you became involved purely for financial gain in organising prostitution from this sauna,'' she said.

The men, she added, had been involved in the ''financial exploitation of women who chose to be engaged in prostitution''.

Sheriff Stephen said that while acknowledging the not guilty pleas regarding the schoolgirls, their involvement in the premises ''added another dimension'' to the offences.

An action by the Crown Office to seize the assets of the three accused was continued for three months to allow the defence to lodge detailed submissions.

At an earlier hearing, the court was told the two 15-year-olds had run away from home. Their mothers had contacted the police and the teenagers were traced.

The fiscal said that, while being interviewed by the police, the girls told them they had been working in the sauna.

Ms More said: ''They started working in the belief that they would do chores, but eventually they had intercourse with men for money.

''They said they deliberately took their school ties with them and left homework lying around as evidence of their age.''