Manockjee Cursetjee

Manockjee Cursetjee also known as Manakji Kharshedji Shroff was a Parsi merchant and judge from Bombay, remembered as a reformer and proponent of female education.

Cursetjee was the son of Cursetjee Manockjee Shroff, and had an English education, under a Mr. Mackay at Joliffe's school, near St. Thomas's Church. He obtained a government post in the Bombay Presidency, and became a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1843 he became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Cursetjee was a noted Anglophile and he visited the United Kingdom three times. On one visit to London, he met Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington, whose father Arthur Wellesley had been entertained by his own father in Bombay at a garden party.

In 1859 Cursetjee started the first English school for Indian girls. Initially it was in his house, "Villa Byculla", with an English governess and his daughters as staff. The initiative gained the support of Kharshedji Nasarwanji Cama and John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune. In 1863, with a land grant and a donation from Cursetjee, the Alexandra Native Girls' English Institution, named after Alexandra of Denmark, set up in its own premises. In 1863, also, Cursetjee joined the Faculty of Law of Bombay University. In 1866 he addressed the Social Science Congress in Sheffield, England, on education in India.