Sake Dean Mahomed (Thomas Mann Baynes, 1820s, Wellcome Library)
In 2018 the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool hosted the the excellent Slaves of Fashion exhibition by the Singh Twins. The exhibition was about Empire, Britain’s relationship with India and consumerism in the past and present.
Most of the artworks on display were mixed media, combining painting with digitally created imagery. The main artworks are eleven symbolic portraits of historical figures which are displayed on lightboxes. Each artwork is beautifully detailed and reflects complex stories. I was particularly struck when I came to ‘Threads of Change’. It examines the rise of Manchester and Liverpool as centres for textile manufacture and trade. At the bottom of the artwork you can see the Liverpool skyline and some Confederate flags fluttering in the breeze – a nod to the cotton trade that had come from the Southern States in America. I was surprised to see Sake Dean Mahomet (often Mahomed) in the top left corner of this artwork. According to the Singh Twins he was included as he represented a ‘more positive legacy of Anglo-Trade relations’
I first came across Dean Mahomet at the Between Worlds exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2007 and more recently when, doing some research on late 18th century Cork, I found a copy of his book The Travels of Dean Mahomet in the archives of the Ursuline Sisters. I’ve been meaning to write an article about him ever since.
Mahomet had a remarkable life: ensign in the Thirtieth Sepoy Regiment in India, Protestant ‘Irish Indian’, inventor of the curry house and ‘Shampooing Surgeon’ to the kings of England.
Sake Dean Mahomet was born in Patna, a city built along the banks of the Ganges in northeast India, in 1759. Aged 11 he became camp follower at the East Indian Company’s Army which was stationed in Bengal and he was assigned to Godfrey Evan Baker a Protestant Anglo-Irish Officer. When Baker returned to Ireland in 1782 Mahomet came with him and settled in Cork in 1784. It seems he lived with the Bakers in Fortwilliam House in Tivoli (now part of the Silversprings Hotel complex). During his time in the city Mahomet became known as the ‘Irish Indian’. Two years after his arrival in Cork Mahomet caused a furore when he eloped with a young Protestant woman, Jane Daly (by this stage it seems he had abandoned his Muslim faith and become a member of the Church of Ireland).
Jane Daly
In 1793 Mahomet took out a series of advertisements in newspapers seeking subscribers for his book The Travels of Dean Mahomet. He garnered remarkable support with 320 subscribers (including Thomas Addis Emmet (the United Irishman) and Rev Dr Moylan, the Catholic Bishop of Cork). The book is the first English language book written about India by an Indian. It’s written as a series of letters about his experiences travelling across India and paints an affectionate portrait of the country and its people.
In 1807 Mahomet left Cork and headed for London where he embarked on several new careers. He initially worked as a traditional medical practitioner for Basil Cochrane a rich Scotsman in London but, after three years, he changed tack and opened the ‘Hindoostane Coffee House’. Despite its name it was not a coffee house, rather it was one of the first curry restaurants in Britain. Not only did he serve food in the restaurant, there was a delivery service for ‘such ladies and gentlemen as may be desirous of having Indian Dinners dressed and sent to their own houses’ (The Morning Post, 2 Feb 1810).
He was a man ahead of his time, or certainly ahead of British palates. The restaurant failed and Mahomet filed for bankruptcy in 1812. The Mahomet family moved to Brighton, a fashionable seaside spa town which offered great opportunities for entrepreneurs and Mahomet re-invented himself as a medical expert specialising in exotic remedies alongside selling ‘Indian tooth powder’ and hair dye. The business proved a great success and attracted the fashionable elite of Brighton and London.
Mahomed’s Baths, 1826 (W. Fleet, British Library)
In 1820 he built ‘Mahomed’s Baths’ near the Brighton Pavilion which offered therapeutic baths to invalids, and ‘Shampooing with Indian oils’. Shampooing was not as we know it today. Mahomet’s son, Horatio, later explained that shampooing consisted of ‘friction and extension of the ligaments…commencing by briskly administering gentle friction gradually increasing the pressure along the whole course of the muscles with both hands…’ More massage than hair cleaning. ‘Mahomed’s Baths’ attracted celebrity clientele and his crowning achievement was his appointment as ‘Shampooing Surgeon’ to Kings George IV and William IV. In 1820 he published Cases Cured, a far cry from his Travels book. Cases Cured was on the medical benefits of shampooing and extolled the virtues of the ‘Indian Medicated Vapour’ which he claimed to have invented.
By the 1840s Mahomet’s baths had fallen out of favour. His partner in the business had died and Mahomet didn’t have the capital to buy the enterprise outright. For the next decade the Mahomets continued their business in reduced circumstances and ever smaller premises. By the time Dean Mahomet died in 1851 the family’s fortune had disappeared and Mahomet became a footnote in the history of Indian entrepreneurs in Britain (and disappeared almost entirely from all histories of Cork, or eighteenth-century Ireland). But as the Slaves of Fashion exhibition demonstrates he hasn’t been entirely forgotten. The Singh Twins noted that the exhibition engages with “issues around shared heritage and identity which challenge generally accepted notions of cultural ownership and the perceived divide between East and West and past and present”. Dean Mahomet certainly knew about shared heritage and identity as he navigated the complex worlds of eighteenth and nineteenth century India, Ireland and England.
Sake Dean Mahomed,(Jean Pierre Feulard, Royal Pavilion, Libraries and Museums, Brighton & Hove)
Further Reading: Between Worlds. Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850 (20070
Michael Fisher (ed with introduction), The Travels of Dean Mahomet, (1997)
murder, mayhem & shiny things 