1. Cork Corporation, Council Book (1876); Charles Bernard Gibson, History of the County (1861), 2:217–18; Volunteer Journal, May 19, 1786; John Bernard Burke, Burke's Irish Family Records (1976), pp. 52–54.

2. “Index to Marriage Licence Bonds,” Cashel and Emly Diocese, Godfrey Evan Baker and Margaret Massey, 1785, PRO Ireland. Rosemary Ffolliott, Biographical Notices (1980), “Baker.”

3. “Index to Marriage Licence Bonds,” Cork and Ross Diocese, Deane Mahomet and Jane Daly, 1786, PRO Ireland. Abu Talib Khan, “Masir Talibi,” vol. 1, fols. 97–98. If we estimate a minimum age of fourteen at the time of her marriage, she would have been born in 1772. This would make her forty-seven when she bore her last surviving child in 1819, a late—but biologically possible—age. Jane gave herself several dates of birth: the 1841 census has 1791; her gravestone (St. Nicholas Church, Brighton) and obituaries say 1780. BG January 2, 1851; BH January 4, 1851. Neither of these dates is possible if she married Dean Mahomet in 1786. Obituaries of two descendants suggest that Dean Mahomet may have married a second time, to an Englishwoman from Bath, also named Jane. Guy's Hospital Reports (1885), 63:1–10; BH August 4, 1888. No conclusive evidence, however, has appeared to substantiate the existence of two different Jane Mahomets.

4. CG March 16, 1793.

5. Personal communication from Sister Mary Hourigan, Librarian, Ursuline Convent, Blackrock, September 15, 1994.

6. Bailie came from a landed Anglo-Irish family of county Down. After his return from India, he married the Honorable Elizabeth, second daughter of the First Viscount Doneraile, and settled on a sizable estate north of Cork city. In 1799, Bailie sold or let his Irish holdings and retired to Bath, England, where he later died. John Bernard Burke, Burke's Irish Peerage (1976), “Bailie;” HC August 29, 1799.

7. See Percy G. Adams, Travel Literature (1983).

8. Jemima (Mrs. Nathaniel Edward) Kindersley lived in Allahabad, 1767–68; two paragraphs in Dean Mahomet's Letter XIX paraphrase her Letters, pp. 251–53. Grose first published his Voyage in 1757, with expanded editions in 1766 and 1772; part appeared in John Knox, New Collection (1767), 2:474–96.

9. See OED, s.v. “Nabob”; James Mayer Holzman, Nabobs (1926); Lucy S. Sutherland, East India Company (1952); Marshall, East Indian Fortunes; HC June 15, 1786.

10. HC June 20, 1785; CG July 20, 1791, December 12, 1795.

11. HC November 20, 1788, March 24, 1796, February 11, 1799.

12. CG October 1, 1791; HC August 31, 1804; CA March 31, 1807.

13. Other plays and works of literature also contained similar themes. E.g., A Voyage to India, An Operatic Performance, announced in CA July 16, 1807 and selections from Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall (1776–86), Chapter 50 on the Prophet Muhammad, republished in CG June 11, 1791.

14. CG August 17, 1791.

15. Times (London), April 20, 1813.

16. E.g., BPbC September 23, 1785.

17. Baker baptized her in Calcutta in 1785. “Baptisms in Calcutta” (1924), p. 199.

18. See Mark Bence-Jones, Guide to Irish Country Houses (1978); p. 126; Bengal Military Consultation Resolution December 7, 1795, FTWM 20:610–11; Richard Colt Hoare, Journal (1807), p. 84; Khan, “Masir Talibi,” vol. 1, fols. 97–98, IOL.

19. NCEP April 22, 1799; CA July 20, 1799.

20. Khan, “Masir Talibi,” vol. 1, fols. 97–98, IOL.

21. See Linda Colley, Britons (1992); Visram, Ayahs, Lascars; Guptara, Black British; and Fryer, Staying Power.

22. London newspapers contained advertisements from Europeans seeking Indian servants and Indian servants seeking employers. See William Hickey, Memoirs (1919–25), 3:150–51; J. Jean Hecht, Continental and Colonial Servants (1954).

23. Dean Mahomet never mentioned other Indians in print so we cannot know the extent to which he associated with them. He stated that he obtained spices, herbs, and oils from India but never revealed his source, perhaps Indian sailors.

24. E.g., [Thomas Broun], Brighton (1818), 1:232.

25. See also Harihar Das, “Early Indian Visitors” (1924), pp. 83–114; Digby, “Eighteenth Century Narrative.”

26. Amelia (baptized June 11, 1809), Henry Edwin (baptized January 6, 1811), St. Marylebone Parish Register, GLRO. Hitherto, he had spelled his name Mahomet but in England, he often shifted the spelling to Mahomed. For consistency, I will continue to use the spelling Mahomet except in direct quotations. Amelia's birth register has his name as William Dean Mahomed, apparently reflecting his brief anglicization of his first name. From 1810, about when he turned fifty, he added the honorific “Sake” (Shaikh) meaning “venerable one”—an epithet often adopted by upwardly mobile Muslims in India.

27. Portman Square (constructed 1764–84) was rising to its peak by 1806. It contained mansions of no less than forty of the nobility and several wealthy Nabobs—topped by Cochrane's. E. B. Chancellor, History of the Squares (1907), pp. 262–75. Other former British officials of the Company lived in the area. E.g., William Collin Jackson, Memoir (1809).

28. Thomas Smith, Topographical (1833), pp. 197–98.

29. Basil Cochrane, Improvement (1809), pp. 1–2.

30. Horatio Mahomed, Bath (1843), pp. 31–35.

31. Cochrane, Improvement, Plates 3, 7.

32. E.g., Sir Arthur Clarke, Essay (1813); Edward Kentish, Essay (1809); Robert James Culverwell, Practical Treatise (1829), pp. 39–40. Eventually, over seventy medical men attested in print to the virtues of Cochrane's method.

33. In early-nineteenth-century London, the neighboring Old and New Hummums provided baths, coffee, food, and lodging. See Epicure's Almanack (1815) and other directories.

34. See Metcalf, Ideologies; David Arnold, personal communication, October 1994.

35. Dean Mahomet's later repeated assertions that he had been practicing shampooing his entire time in Britain may have referred to his practice on patrons or family in Ireland. Nevertheless, the first strong evidence of his having done shampooing comes from his work in Cochrane's vapor bath.

36. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles, Letter 66; Marcus Valarius Martial, Epigrams, Book 3, Epigram 82.

37. Khan, Seir, 2:365.

38. Raymond in Khan, Seir, n188. See also James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs (1834), 1:156, 350.

39. See Michael Lambton Este, Remarks on Baths (1811); William Cleoburey, Full Account (1825); Times (London), January 29, 1813, September 29, 1813, March 21, 1814; [Mrs. Clermont], Observations (1814).

40. Rate Books for Marylebone, 1808–14, MPL. There were then some two thousand coffeehouses and five thousand public houses in greater London. John Feltham, Picture of London (1810), p. 397; Ralph Nevill, London Clubs (1911), p. 3; Ellis Aytoun, Penny Universities (1956), p. xiv; Bryant Lillywhite, London (1963).

41. Victualler's Licence 1810–12, GLRO; Marylebone Rate Book 1810–12, MPL; Holden's Directory (1811). Charles Street is built over, but a Japanese restaurant, Yumi, stands near the site of the old Hindostanee Coffee House.

42. The British Government identified public houses with both political unrest and morally licentious behavior, leading in 1753 to a tougher Licencing Act. 26 George II c 31, revising 5 and 6 Edward II c 25; Victualler's Licences, GLRO.

43. See Epicure's Almanack, pp. 123–24; Charles Stewart, a veteran of India, called it the “Hooka Club” in his 1814 (but not 1810) translation of Khan, Travels, 1:124.

44. Times (London), March 27, 1811.

45. 35 George Street, Marylebone Rate Book 1811, MPL.

46. Epicure's Almanack, pp. 123–24.

47. Lillywhite, London, pp. 330–35, 395–403.

48. Epicure's Almanack, p. 31; Lillywhite, London, pp. 289–94.

49. E.g., Sarah Shade, the widow of a Sergeant, had lived for half a dozen years in India and then cooked Indian dishes for a living in London. Sarah Shade, Narrative (1801), p. 27.

50. Victualler's Licence 1811, GLRO; Marylebone Rate Book 1812, MPL.

51. Docket Book (B.4.31): Docquet, March 18, 1812, case of Dean Mahomet, Tavern Keeper, George Street, PRO.

52. Epicure's Almanack, pp. 123–24.

53. The Hindostan Coffee House was licensed by George Spencer and Richard Burton only in 1812. Victualler's Licence (1812), GLRO. The British Imperial Calendar and Feltham, Picture, identified the Hindoostanee Coffee House as continuing there from 1812 to 1833. Lillywhite missed the early years of what he called the “Hindoostance [sic] Coffee House,” dating it 1819–33. Lillywhite, London, p. 269.

54. William (1797–1833) had at least seven children. Parish Records, St. Leonard's (Shoreditch), St. Botolph-without-Aldergate, St. Bartholomew the Great; Census of 1841, 1851, PRO.

55. Times (London), April 20, 1813.

56. Richard Russell, Dissertation (1752). See also Anthony Relhan, Short History (1762; reprint, 1829).

57. John George Bishop, Peep into the Past (1892), pp. 225–26. Hot and cold baths were established in Margate by the 1760s, Scarborough by 1798, and Weymouth by 1785. Sue Farrant, Georgian Brighton (1980), p. 15.

58. In 1803, John Williams built a hot and cold bath institution near Awsiter's; Nathan Smith established his “Air Pump Vapour Bath” at Artillery Place on Brighton's West Cliff by 1806. Ralph Blegborough, Facts and Observations (1803); John Feltham, Guide (1806), p. 85.

59. Edward Brayley in John Nash, Illustrations (1838), p. 1.

60. See Sue Farrant, “Physical Development of the Royal Pavilion” (1992); and Henry D. Roberts, History (1959).

61. Dean Mahomet's earliest testimonials are dated Brighton, September 1814. This bathhouse was apparently attached to the New Steyne Hotel run by W. R. Mott; see S. D. Mahomed, Cases Cured (1820), pp. 28–29. Mott's New Steyne Hotel featured baths until 1818; see Feltham, Guide (1815), pp. 117–18; Brighton Commissioners, Minute Books, February 4, 1818.

62. Newspaper advertisement (early 1815) in John Ackerson Erredge, History (1862, grangerized edition), 4:149.

63. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1826), pp. viii, 17. For an inventory of Dean Mahomet's equipment, see Lord Chamberlain's Accounts, LC/11/49: October 10, 1825, January 5, 1828, PRO.

64. H. Mahomed, Bath, pp. 54–58.

65. See identical advertisements throughout April 1815 in SWA.

66. Advertisement (late 1815) in Erredge, History (grangerized edition), 4:149.

67. Baptized March 26, 1815, St. Nicholas Parish Records.

68. See H. R. Atree, Atree's Topography (1809), p. 62; and John Bruce, History (1833), pp. 43, 91; Brighton Commissioners, Minute Books, September 10, 1823; Board of Ordinance Minutes, WO 55/1578(7) February 17, 1827 PRO (Kew).

69. November 17, 1816, August 2, 1818, December 28, 1819, and January 7, 1818 respectively; St. Nicholas (Brighton) Parish Records, ESRO.

70. C. Wright, Brighton Ambulator (1818), pp. 137–39. Guides had praised Dean Mahomet's Devonshire Place Baths. E.g., Feltham, Guide (1815), p. 118.

71. Robert James Culverwell, Life (1852), pp. 26–38.

72. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1822), Preface; British Traveller (London), 6 January 1823. These statements have led most later commentators who mention or discuss Dean Mahomet's life in Brighton to date his arrival there to 1784 or soon thereafter. E.g., D. Robert Elleray, Brighton (1987); Sir Evan Cotton, “`Sake Deen Mahomed' of Brighton” (1939); Farrant, Georgian, p. 18; Clifford Musgrove, Life in Brighton (1970), pp. 203–5; Frederick Harrison and James Sharp North, Old Brighton (1937), p. 111.

73. E.g., John Aldini, General (1819); John G. Coffin, Discourses (1818); M. La Beaume, Observations (1818); Charles Gower, Auxiliaries (1819); Theodore Hart, Treatise (1819); William Scott, Proposal (1820); Andre Louis Gosse, Account (1820).

74. Dean Mahomet announced Mahomed's Baths as opened in February 1821 but must have temporarily shifted again to West Cliff late that year. See advertisement for his West Cliff establishment, BG December 27, 1821.

75. John Gloag, Mr. Loudon's England (1970), pp. 200–201.

76. Newspaper clipping (1821) in Erredge, History (grangerized edition), 4:148.

77. Brighton Commissioners, “Minute Books,” March 19, 1823, April 2, 1823, November 11, 1829, ESRO.

78. The sources for my composite are: Letter to the Editor from A. Monsieur, Dieppe, May 12, 1826, BG June 1, 1826; A. B. Granville, Spas (1841), 2:562–64; Advertisements for auction, BH September 18–October 16, 1841, July 8–29, 1843, August 5–12, 1843, April 24–May 8, 1847; and BG September 16–October 14, 1841, August 2–9, 1843.

79. The plan comes from Cochrane's 1809 work on baths for Middlesex Hospital. The basement, pipes, and bathing arrangements seem to be similar to Mahomed's Baths, although the latter had two floors of baths, no consulting room, and no “Russian” style baths. Cochrane, Improvement, Plate 5.

80. Dean Mahomet was the legal proprietor and occupier of this house from 1822 until (the records end in) 1831. Brighton Land Tax Records, ESRO. From July 1839 onward, Dean Mahomet and Jane used 2 Black Lion Street as their address. The census of June 6, 1841, however, located them as having spent the previous night at King's Road. Perhaps they had recently moved back temporarily so as to install baths in their Black Lion Street home. In October 1841 and August 1843, other people were established in the King's Road house. From September 1844 until their deaths, however, Dean Mahomet and Jane lived consistently on Black Lion Street.

81. Review of Shampooing in Gentleman's Magazine (1823), p. 162. Since Dean Mahomet's second book, Shampooing, about medicine, received such notice, but his first book, Travels, did not, we must conclude that the place of publication, subject matter, genre, changing times and tastes, or a combination of these made his second book more attractive to British society than his first.

82. Decisive legislation to professionalize the medical profession did not pass in Parliament until 1858. See M[ildred] Jeanne Peterson, Medical Profession (1978).

83. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1822), Preface. Popham died in 1821.

84. See F. B. Smith, People's Health (1979), pp. 333–45.

85. Letter of his grandson, G. S. Mahomed, BH August 11, 1888 (my thanks to Rozina Visram for this citation). Cotton cites this tradition in his interview with another grandson, Reverend James Dean Kerriman. Cotton, “`Sake Deen Mahomed.'” Dean Mahomet did not serve in the Twenty-Seventh Regiment, but Captain Hugh Cossart Baker, with whom Dean Mahomet lived in Cork, was an officer in the Twenty-Seventh Regiment of the Royal Army.

86. George S. Mahomed, “Sake Deen Mahomed” (1940).

87. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1826), Preface.

88. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1826), Preface.

89. S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1826), Preface.

90. E.g., Granville, Spas, 2:562–64.

91. Brighton Town Rate Books (1824, 1827), BRL; Brighton Rate Books (1826), ESRO.

92. E.g., BG June 14, 1821, January 10, 1822.

93. E.g., E. Wallis, Brighton Townsman (c. 1826), p. 61; and Charles Marsh, Clubs of London (1828), 1:168ff.

94. E.g., BG December 27, 1821, March 28, 1822, April 4, 1822.

95. BG January 10, 1822.

96. BG September 25, 1823. Competitors elsewhere in England also imitated Dean Mahomet's claims. E.g., Seaman's advertisements in St. James Chronicle, March 12–28, 1835.

97. BG December 27, 1821; S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1826), pp. 49, 55; (1838), pp. 138–39; Mrs. Meer Hasan Ali describes indigenous Indian “wet” and “dry cupping,” using a buffalo horn. Observations (1832), 2:42–43.

98. For example, King William took eighteen shampooing and vapor baths in September 1830. BG September 8–10, 1830. Lord Chamberlain's Accounts, LC/11/69, October 10, 1830; LC/3/69, Warrants and Appointments, fol. 161a, September 20, 1830, PRO.

99. E.g., Lord Chamberlain's Accounts, LC/11/49, October 10, 1825, January 5, 1828, PRO.

100. E.g., Dean Mahomet's bill for 22 baths at 6 shillings to 4 members of the royal household staff. Lord Chamberlain's Accounts, LC/11/49, October 10, 1825. See also LC/11/49, January 5, 1828, PRO. The Duke of Wellington's set was well represented among his patients. Arthur Wellesley, Prime Minister's Papers (1975), 1:341, 343. Lady Bedingfeld (Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide) recorded the medical treatment of Princess Louise of Saxe-Weimar and herself by courses of Vapour Baths and “rubbing” in the Pavilion, September–November 1831. Lady Jerningham, Jerningham Letters (1896), 2:348–50. Lord Seaford reported his course of treatment and that of his peers, Lady Wharncliffe, First Lady Wharncliffe (1927), 1:315. See the long lists of nobility and gentry in Mahomed's Visitor's Books, BRL.

101. E.g., Deenshah Firamgee, probably a Parsi from Bombay. Mahomed's Visitor's Books (c. January 1827), BRL.

102. BG December 28, 1826, January 4, 1827. Musgrove mentions this but misdates it. Life, p. 171.

103. BG August 19, 1830. For example, while Dean Mahomet was a registered voter from 1841 on, he did not actually vote in Parliamentary elections until 1847. Poll Books: Brighton, 1835–59; East Sussex 1832–37; Sussex 1820–41; Westminster 1841–52.

104. BG September 9, 1830. See also BG August 17, 1826 and September 15, 1831.

105. BG October 7, 1837.

106. BG March 24, 1825, February 10, 1831, February 9, 1832, January 11, 1834.

107. BG December 7–28, 1833; January 18, 1834; February 15, 1834; Brighton Guardian, February 26, 1851.

108. Marsh, Clubs, 1:171–77.

109. Anthony Dale, Brighton Town (1976), p. 199; Brighton Commissioners, Minute Books, August 27, 1828, ESRO.

110. BH September 23, 1837; Brighton Commissioners, Minute Books, March 18, 1829, November 11, 1829, November 3, 1830, August 29, 1832, September 19, 1832, ESRO.

111. BH March 17, 1838.

112. [Isaac] Robert Cruikshank, Brighton!! (1830), p. 13; Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (reprint, 1846–48), p. 101; Richard R. Madden, Travels (1829), 1:64–65; Marsh, Clubs, 1:168ff; Horace Smith, ed., Comic Miscellanies (1841), 1:330–33; George Augustus Sala, Life and Adventures (1895),1:201–2; [Charles Malloy Wesmacott] Bernard Blackmantle, “Brighton Misnomers,” BG April 27, 1826, and English Spy (1825), 1:345.

113. John Shaw, Letter, BG December 13, 1821; Poem of John Hills cited in S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing, (1838), pp. 124–27.

114. Horace Smith Letter (1828), Arthur H. Beavan, James and Horace Smith (1899), p. 280.

115. Granville, Spas, 2:562–64.

116. BG April 3, 1828–December 3, 1829; S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1838), pp. 138–39; Westminster Rate Books, 1830–35, WPL; St. James (Westminster) Parish Records, December 25, 1834, WPL.

117. Westminster Rate Books 1836, 1837, WPL.

118. BH June 30, 1838; S. D. Mahomed, Shampooing (1838), endmatter.

119. Horatio took over their operation almost entirely from about 1843 onward and remained there until 1858 when the Metropolitan Bath Company hired him as its “Resident Manager.” In 1859, Horatio opened a small bath at his home in 42 Somerset Street near Portman Square where he remained until his death in 1873. Horatio Mahomed, Bath; and Horatio Mahomed, Short Hints on Bathing (1844). Westminster Rate Books, 1859–73, WPL.

120. Census figures in Henry Martin, History (1871), p. 26.

121. Brighton Valuation Registers 1846, 1848; Brighton Town Rate Book 1851, BRL.

122. BH October 5–19, 1844. Knight gave up this bath in 1848. An established swimming bath company, Brill, took possession and renamed it Brill's Shampooing Baths. In 1870, Markwell's hotel took over the site but was itself absorbed into the Queen's Hotel in 1908, which remains there today. In the 1970s, this hotel sought to market his name by installing a “Sake Dene Cocktail Lounge.”

123. BH May 15, 1847.

124. BH September 28, 1844, October 5–18, 1844.

125. E.g., BH October 18, 1845; 1841 Census. Arthur ran this reduced bathing establishment there and later a few blocks away (64 West Street), apparently until his death in 1872. Advertisement (c. 1853) and Testimonial (October 30, 1854) in Mahomed's Visitor's Book, BRL.

126. Brighton Guardian February 26, 1851; BG February 27, 1851; Gentleman's Magazine April 1851, p. 444b; Willis, Willis' Current Notes (March 1851), pp. 22–23.

127. For discussion of “contact literatures,” see Ron Carter, “A Question of Interpretation” (1986).

128. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 15.

129. Shampooing came to mean hair-wash only from the 1860s. For various assertions about the British origins of the Turkish Bath, see Charles Bartholomew, Turkish Bath (1871); Richard Beamish, Lecture (1859); Robert James Culverwell, Few Practical Observations (n.d.); Diogenes [pseudonym], Life in a Tub (1858); Bartholomew de Dominiceti, To the Public (1764), and Plan for Extending (1771); John Gibney, Treatise (1825); Jonathan Green, Short Illustration (1825); James Lawrie, Roman or Turkish Bath (1864); Madden, Travels; Photophilus [pseudonym], New Irish Bath (1860); James Playfair, Method of Construction (1783); W. Gordon Stables, Turkish and other Baths (1882); John Symons, Observations on Vapor-Bathing (1766); David Urquhart, Pillars of Hercules (1850), Turkish Bath (1856), pp. 6, 27, and Manual of the Turkish Bath (1865); Henry Weekes, Warm Water Remedy (1844); Charles Whitlaw, Scriptural Code of Health (1838); John Wynter, Of Bathing in the Hot-baths, at Bathe (1728).

130. E.g., Edith Ohlson, Letter to the Editor, Sussex County Magazine, 9 (January–December 1935), p. 331.

131. Personal communication from J. Stewart Cameron, April 21, 1995. See his article with Jackie Hicks on Frederick Akbar Mahomed in KidneyInternational (1996).

132. See Visram, Ayahs, pp. 64–67; Guptara, Black British.

133. Dean Mahomet appears, for example, in a visual presentation at Liverpool's Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Museum; he had no connection with the slave trade or the movement for its abolition.

134. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. xx.