Merry marchioness

Fourteen years after receiving the £ 500,000 bequest from Bapsybanoo Khursheedjee Pavry, the Winchester City Council finally decided to rename and refurbish the King Alfred Hall in the Guildhall after Pavry, the last marchioness of the city and hang her full length portrait there as per the demands attached to her gift, it was reported in the London media on June 29, 2009.

Married in 1952 to Marquess Henry Paulet, the 16th Marquess of Winchester when he was 90 and she 51, she is understood to have visited Winchester only once that year and "felt snubbed when so few people turned out to greet her,” stated a newspaper clipping that was forwarded to Parsiana by reader Dinoo Parakh who remembered "as a child hearing about her marriage… At that time most Parsis were in awe of the British Royalty (a marquess being just one rank below a duke).” Within weeks of their marriage, the Marquess, married twice earlier but with no issue, is supposed to have left her for another woman thought to be Eve Fleming, mother of James Bond author Ian Fleming with whom he stayed until his death just four months before he could complete his centenary.

Bapsybanoo meanwhile relocated to London and returned to India in 1985 where she died 10 years later. But determined that Winchester should remember her she made the £ 500,000 legacy which had over the years grown to £ 1.4 million. "I was on the Council when the bequest was made and it was quite a shock because she only came here once,” councilor Freddie Allgood told correspondent Jo Steele. Struggling to meet the demands attached to her gift, the Council ultimately settled on King Alfred Hall, named after Alfred the Great who was buried in the city. "The hall is the largest and grandest we have and we will now hang the portrait of her there and there will be a plaque and a biography. That way people will finally know who she was, which is what she wanted,” added Allgood.

Bapsybanoo Pavry: People will finally know about her

Daughter of a Parsi priest, Bapsy­banoo had been in England from a young age and the Bombay beauty was considered to be quite a socialite. Although few facts are known of Bapsybanoo, thought to be the only Indian marchioness in history, "a few tangible reminders exist” of her brief encounter with the British peerage. She settled an endowment on Oxford University which funds the annual Winchester Lecture in International Relations (the inaugural 1996 lecture was delivered by Robert Hunter, the United States Ambassador to NATO) as well as the Bapsybanoo Marchioness of Winchester Prize for a thesis in the area of International Relations, in particular human freedom struggles. "If only she had left all this money to the Parsis!” notes an e-mail from Dadar resident Mickie Sorabjee.