Sake Dean Mahomed

Sake Dean Mahomed Shampooing Surgeon. Brighton.
Drawn on the stone from life
by Thomas Mann Baynes, 1820s
Hand-coloured lithograph on paper, 262 x 223mm
© The Trustees of the Wellcome Trust

Born in Patna, India, Dean Mahomed (1759--1851) was the younger son of an Indian officer in the army of the East India Company army stationed in Bengal. In 1784, he accompanied Godfrey Evan Baker, the military officer he had served, to Cork, Ireland. There, he studied English and wrote his travel memoir. In 1786, Dean Mahomed eloped with an Anglo-Irish gentlewoman named Jane Daly whom he married in an Anglican wedding ceremony.

Around 1807, Dean Mahomed and his family relocated to London where he worked for the wealthy Scottish nobleman and colonial administrator, the Honourable Basil Cochrane, who had opened a bathhouse in his mansion in Portman Square. Two years later, Dean Mahomed established the 'Hindostanee Coffee House' near Cochrane's residence, where he served Indian food and offered hookahs. By 1814, Dean Mahomed embarked on his final entrepreneurial venture as a bathhouse keeper in Brighton.