The Indian Grope Trick

Visitors to Brighton may know Queen's Hotel. Its eastern end was known 150 years ago as Mahomed's Baths, an establishment run by a gentleman from Patna known as Sake Dean Mahomed, Shampooing Surgeon. But he did not make incisions into patients; nor did he wash their hair. His shampoo was a translation of champi, the Indian massage -- or rather, an artful elaboration. As far as can be gathered from the drawings of his invention, he really ran a kind of turkish bath.

The Victorians were rather prudish -- even more prudish than modern Indians. Remember, at that time the Brighton beach was crowded with bathing machines. This bathing machine was a kind of saloon with a hole in the middle. Bathers climbed into this saloon and closed the door. Then a horse pulled the saloon into the sea. There the women undressed -- that is, they got into a blouse and a bloomer-- a cross between salwar and Bermuda shorts. Then they descended into the water through the hole in the middle of the bathing machine, and thus bathed in the sea without being seen by male eyes.

 

On the same grounds, Sake Dean Mahomed's clients declined to be seen naked by strange eyes. But Dean Mahomed's speciality was massage. The steam had to be administered to them naked, but they had to be massaged without being seen naked. There was a contradiction here which Sake Dean Mahomed resolved as follows. The steam, scented with Indian herbs, was generated in a boiler, whence it was conveyed into various rooms housing clients, and there introduced into tent-like structures which covered the entire patient except for the head. The tent was made of flannel, a thick, soft woollen fabric. As the client enjoyed the steam bath, he or she was pummelled through the tent. Thus was invented the Indian Shampoo.

Dean Mahomed's soothing treatment attracted distinguished clients. King George IV spent much of his time in Brighton with a mistress; the Indianesque Pavilion, a pleasure-house he built in Brighton, is a famous tourist attraction today. He graced Dean Mahomed's establishment, and bestowed upon him a Royal Warrant. The King became so enamoured of Dean Mahomed's Indian Vapour Bath that Mahomed installed the apparatus in King George's bathroom. There he used to administer the pleasures to the King. Often the King would let Mahomed know of his visits in advance, which brought Mahomed some attention in Brighton society. When George died, his brother William IV succeeded him; he continued to patronise Dean Mahomed's Baths.

This Dean Mahomed was born in 1759 in a soldier's house in Patna. While he was a child, his father was killed in battle. Dean Mahomed attached himself to Godfrey Evan Baker, a teenage Irish ensign in the army of East India Company. As Baker rose in the army, so did Mahomed. Baker returned to Cork in Ireland in 1784; Dean Mahomed went with him. It is not clear what he did for a living. But Cork was full of rich landed families whose sons had served in India, so he probably attached himself to one or more of them in some useful capacity.

Amongst other things, he wrote a book and dedicated it to Colonel William A Bailie, another Anglo-Irishman who had served in the Company's army. This book is the first written by an Indian in English. It has been republished by Michael H Fisher with detailed historical notes on Dean Mahomed's life (The First Indian Author in English: Dean Mahomed (1759-1851) in India, Ireland and England, Oxford University Press, Delhi). Dean Mohamed's book is a chronicle of his marches and travels with the army, of people and places. It is not wholly reliable. He describes some places which he did not visit; and copied a few passages from other books. What is striking about his description is what a violent and unattractive place northern and eastern India was in his youth. Huge armies marauded the land. It was safer to be in an army than to be its victim, so every army was followed by a horde of servants, merchants and hangers-on. Armies aimed to grow rich. For that purpose they looted the populace and sacked the cities of

enemies; but with equal fairness they exacted heavy tributes from friendly states. With such rampaging armies, settled economic activity could not have been paying. Some tribes lived on robbery and theft. When they were caught, the common punishment, apart from death, was cutting off the nose. Thousands of people in that age must have gone about without a nose.

Anyway, Dean Mohamed escaped from this pestilential country to green Ireland. There he eloped with and married a local girl, Jane Daly. In 1807 he left Cork for London. There he worked for the Honourable Basil Cochrane, a scion of a noble family that had gone to India and made a vast fortune selling supplies to the Company Army and the Royal Navy. In 1807, he came back to London and bought a splendid mansion in Portland Square. There he set up a bathing establishment. Dean Mahomed took employment there; that is how he learnt the Indian Art of Shampooing. In 1810, he launched out on his own and set up Hindoostanee Coffee House in George Street. In a couple of years he went bankrupt. Then he went to Brighton, where he set up his hugely successful baths.

But his good fortune in Brighton did not last. Victoria, who became Queen in 1838, never patronised him. He never saved enough to buy the property where he ran his baths. When its owner died, it was sold in 1843 to a man who threw out Dean Mahomed and capitalised on his reputation. Dean Mahomed faded out of public life, and died in 1851. Thus ended the long life of one of India's most colourful adventurers.