Exploring Britain’s mixed-race history
Britain’s mixed-race history has long been overlooked: it’s time we explored this major part of our national story, writes Lucas Fothergill, a documentary filmmaker and author of Everyone Everywhere: 21 Stories of Mixed Race Britain.
I recently walked through a cold, damp underpass near Baker Street station in London. Red-and-white adverts for Sherlock Holmes and Madame Tussauds lined the walls, yet nestled among them is one panel noting that the site of the Hindoostane Coffee House, Britain’s first Indian restaurant, once stood around the corner.
Run by Bihar-born entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomed, his Irish wife Jane Daly and their children, this mixed family opened the restaurant on George Street in 1809, near a leafy square lined by rows of handsome brick townhouses. They even had a delivery service.
Unfortunately, their passion for food wasn’t matched by a regard for good business. While the couple’s plan to sell ‘Indianised British food’ was sound, a lobster curry cost 12 shillings, equal to four days’ wages for a skilled tradesman in 1810. In today’s money, that’s like going for a quick curry and shelling out £390 for a main meal.
The finances did not work. By 1812, the family was bankrupt.
‘The stakes were high for the family’
But this was far from the end of the Mahomeds’ ventures. Moving to Brighton, the family opened ‘Mahomed’s Baths’, where they combined Indian and British practices: customers could bathe in warm sea water, and the Mahomed family used the practice of ‘chāmpo’, a Hindi word referring to a head massage with oils and the origin of the English word shampoo.
The stakes were high for the family, who couldn’t afford yet another failure. ‘I had to struggle with doubts and objections raised and circulated against my bath,’ Sake Dean Mahomed later wrote.
Thankfully, it was a huge success. ‘They are far superior to common baths,’ one local newspaper announced in a review. Jane and Sake Dean Mahomed ran the establishment together alongside their mixed children, becoming prominent figures in Brighton’s social scene in the process, with newspapers showering them in praise.
‘As you never would mention the price, allow me to present you with this small piece of plate as a token of my gratitude,’ wrote a happy customer named La Comtesse Tyszkiewicz, who gave the family a ‘silver cup cover and dish’ as a gift.
‘Shampooing Surgeon to King George IV’
The Mahomed family’s fortunes were improving so rapidly that, in a bizarre turn, Sake Dean was then, ‘appointed through royal warrant as Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV’. If you ever thought Britain is a serious country, please remember that our past kings appointed shampooing surgeons by ‘royal warrant’.
The good news for the Mahomeds didn’t stop there: Sake Dean wrote literary works, one about his many travels and another about shampooing – the first books written by an Indian man in English. This was a major moment, as many Westerners of the time believed Asian people to be incapable of writing in such an eloquent way.
Here was a mixed family that defied conventions: Sake Dean and Jane eloped in order to be together, travelled across the world and were trailblazers in multiple industries, changing the face of British food culture in the process. ‘My only regret is that my endeavours will not be equal to my wishes,’ he wrote later in life. His wishes appeared endless.
Perhaps because of their association with the royals and wealthy elites, the Mahomeds were spared the cruel treatment other mixed families endured during this time period. It’s the icy truth of Britain’s class system – sometimes, finances and status impact family life more.
‘Tragic, history-altering events’
This was certainly true in the case of Sophia Duleep Singh, the mixed daughter of a deposed Indian prince and a German-Ethiopian mother. She was also the goddaughter of Queen Victoria, and later became a prominent Suffragette, who then fought against the very elites she was born amongst. On multiple occasions, Singh was spared arrest because of her family ties.
But one ferociously-brave individual was not afforded such treatments abroad. Noor Inayat Khan’s Indian father was a descendant of the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ – southern Indian ruler Tipu Sultan, who had fought against the British in the late 18th century – making her a princess, while her American mother had parents who were Scottish, Irish and English.
By 1938, after studying at the University of Paris, Khan was becoming established as an ‘elegantly dressed’ writer, penning stories about ‘nymphs who lived on a high mountain slope’, where they ‘talked and jabbered and chattered more than the crickets in the grass and the sparrows in the trees’.
Impressively, she wrote in both English and French, created her own illustrations, published her first book in 1939, and was soon broadcasting her tales across French radio. One day, she planned to publish a children’s newspaper, called Bel Age (Beautiful Age).
But then the Second World War erupted. Khan fled to Paris, was recruited into the secret service, parachuted back into Nazi-occupied Paris and worked undercover to sabotage the invaders who had overtaken her city. The tragic, history-altering events that came next were almost unbelievable.
Betrayed by her comrades, Khan was imprisoned and interrogated, but never gave away any secrets. She then escaped, was captured, escaped before, tragically, being sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where she was executed.
‘Suspicions crept in that threatened to wreck Paddington’s promising career’
Khan’s story is one of almost constant twists and surprises – much like the dazzling Pablo Paddington’s. While middle-class Victorian Britain had a taste for cruel exhibitions of people with physical disabilities or certain racial characteristics, this wasn’t the case in the non-segregated British circus, where Paddington worked.
Circuses then were spectacular, touring across the country with firework displays and large-scale physical feats. It was here, among fans and ropes and beasts, that Paddington made his name. He rose through the ranks, joining the popular Cooke’s circuses until eventually touring with the famous Astleys – the family largely credited for inventing the ‘modern circus’ almost 250 years ago.
However, suspicions crept in that threatened to wreck Paddington’s promising career. Why was Paddington of such small stature? A local shoemaker recalled ‘making a pair of boots for one of the black men in Mr Cooke’s company, who had the smallest foot for a man.’ And where was Paddington from? In various reports, they were described as ‘African, Indian, Brazilian, Siamese and as a “celebrated man of colour”’.
Though few knew it for certain, Pablo Paddington, allegedly, was a stage name, and he was not a he, either. Rather, Pablo Paddington was a pseudonym for a mixed woman, passing as a Black man wearing men’s clothes, who disguised the ‘deception so dexterously’, that women fell in love with her without realising.
The subsequent scandal would change the lives of Paddington, their lovers and much more.
‘How can we connect with each other?’
The Mahomed family, Singh, Khan and Paddington should be far more central figures in British history, but they’ve been compartmentalised. Why, then, is it that the history of Britain's mixed people is often overlooked?
When giving a talk at Brixton Library recently, one audience member said they felt there wasn't a wider mixed community they could connect with. And an interviewee for my book said how, in their view, being mixed was an identity of ‘weakness’, compared to other, stronger identities.
The challenge is that each mixed experience is so vastly different from another, because we all have completely different backgrounds. This has created a fragmentation, where we’ve been unable to see ourselves as part of a richer historical lineage. So how can we connect with each other?
I believe the most powerful way we can help change this is by taking a passionate interest in our history and the people who drove it. Seeing that we're all a part of something bigger is an incredible feeling.
That's why I spent over five years researching, interviewing, and writing my book Everyone Everywhere. It shares narratives from across the centuries of fascinating mixed Brits: the mistakes they made, the challenges they overcame and the people they loved. Told together, these 21 stories represent a longer lineage of amazing people, from across time.
The stories begin in the present day, before unfurling back through time. Chapter by chapter, they tell us more about our mixed identities, the structural and cultural forces that shape it, and how Britain continues to rapidly change.
Lucas Fothergill’s Everyone Everywhere: 21 Stories of Mixed Race Britain is available with a 10% discount via our charity partner BookKind.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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Photo: Lucas Fothergill © Andie Warner
