New Delhi, June 6 -- In 1921, Mumbai's Prince of Wales Museum, today Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, housed a military hospital and a children's welfare centre. At one of the charity events that year, a British woman, Winifred Strangman, donated a staggering Rs.80,000 to the centre. A part of it came from the sale of roses, which seems surprising today but back then it was not unheard of to sell flowers for charity. These were either grown at the rose stalls that Strangman and other aristocratic Bombay ladies had at the museum or at their residences in Apollo Bunder, infers art curator and museum consultant Ruta Waghmare Baptista from her research on Strangman.

Strangman was not just a prominent philanthropist but also a ...