Viva Brighton Issue #52 June 2017

BITS AND BOBS
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SECRETS OF THE ROYAL PAVILION:
SHAMPOOING SURGEON TO THE KING
This month sees the opening of Jane Austen by
the Sea, a display in the Royal Pavilion that will
explore the great novelist’s relationship with the
seaside, sea-bathing and the Prince Regent. Print
culture in every form was hugely important in
Austen’s time and, of course, to her personally.
We have therefore included first editions of her
books, early guidebooks of ‘watering places’,
ephemera from early libraries, Regency magazines
with colourful fashion plates, and hilarious
Georgian caricatures and political cartoons.
Among the exhibits is a print I particularly like
(left): an image of a man of Indian origin, dressed
in what appears to be Indian clothing, standing
against an imagined landscape. The building is
reminiscent of both the Royal Pavilion and the
images created by Thomas and William Daniell,
two artists who had spent years in India in the
1780s and 90s, and subsequently painted an
impression of India for a Western audience keen
to see pictures of the unfamiliar East.
The man in the print is Sake Deen Mahomed,
one of the best-known early entrepreneurial
Asian immigrants to Britain. He was born in
1759 in Patna, north-eastern India, joined the
Native Infantry of the East India Company,
and had a successful military career. In 1784 he
moved to Ireland, where he studied English and
fell in love with an Irish woman whom he later
married. In 1794 he published a book in English
about his travels and moved to London with his
family in 1807. There he opened a Hindoostane
Coffee House, and introduced Indian cuisine to
the English palate, before becoming a professional
‘shampooer’ in Brighton, where he opened
Mahomed’s Baths near the seafront in 1812. His
business was described in advertisements as ‘The
Indian Medicated Vapour Bath, a cure to many
diseases and giving full relief when everything
fails; particularly Rheumatic and paralytic, gout,
stiff joints, old sprains, lame legs, aches and pains
in the joints’. He eventually became ‘shampooing
surgeon’ to George IV and William IV.
The print, a lithograph by Thomas Mann Baynes
printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, is one
of many images of the illustrious Sake Deen
Mahomed. It is a testament to Georgian society’s
continued fascination with the East in general,
and respect for Mahomed in particular. The
dress he is wearing in this picture was a cultural
hybrid, probably invented by Mahomed himself
and worn at court, with the intention of looking
both exotic and modern, combining Eastern
and Western features. Under the thigh-length,
long-sleeved silk coat in the style of Indian court
dress, for example, he wears a pair of tailored
long breeches that are in fact a very early pair of
trousers. Astonishingly, Mahomed’s extraordinary
outfit survives in our collection, and we will
display it alongside the print in the Jane Austen
exhibition. A large portrait of Mahomed, in Western
dress, can be seen in the history galleries of
Brighton Museum.
Alexandra Loske, Curator, Royal Pavilion Archives
Jane Austen by the Sea opens at the Pavilion
on 17th June. brightonmuseums.org.uk
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