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As you lather the coin-sized pellet of slippery fluid between your palms and run it through your hair, expecting it to smoothen, cleanse and nourish it whilst belting out songs from the early 2000s (we don’t judge), do you ever think to yourself, “Who even came up with the concept of a shampoo?” It’s not something we break our heads over either, but the seemingly trivial concept of shampooing, among many other valuable contributions, was made to the world by an Indian.
We all know of how the word ‘shampoo’ has its roots in the Hindi word, ‘champu’, but taking it one step further is a man by the name of Sake Dean Mahomed, who took the practice of shampooing from the Indian mainland to all over the West. This prominent feather in his cap is accompanied by various accolades, such as playing a part in introducing England to Indian cuisine and being the first Indian to publish a book in English!
Mahomed’s humble beginnings were in Patna, Bihar, where he spent his time concocting herbal potions and soaps that he would use in champis. His knowledge of the subject can be accredited to the fact that his family belonged to the nai (barber) caste. After his father’s death, he worked under a British trainee surgeon, Captain Godfrey Baker in the East India Company. The job under Baker took him far and wide across the country before he landed at Cork, Ireland in 1784.
What could have been the most daunting experience of his life, shifting to Cork resulted in him finding his better half, Jane Daly. The acceptance of inter-racial relationships that exists in 2020 was absent circa 1785, and so they did what Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol would go on to do 216 years later in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham — eloped and moved to England. This is where his entrepreneurial side began to show as he set up the Hindoostane Coffee House in 1810. At the age of 25, he wanted to bring the flavours of India to England not just through food, but also in ambience. The Coffee House effectively created a mini-India atmosphere, but at a time where people were unfamiliar with the idea of dining-in, it resulted in low sales, and ultimately bankruptcy.
Deciding to go back to his roots and make a name in what he knew best, he found work under Sir Basil Cochrane who ran a vapour bathhouse in Portman Square in London. He soon recognised Englishmen’s desires for health cures and medicinal procedures. His popularity kept growing until he came to be known as the man who introduced ‘champissage’ – no different from the champi we see people receiving under trees on the footpath in India even today. Using his herbal mixes with vapour, he continued to provide customers with enriching experiences which soon became his Indian speciality. As he wrote various books alongside his main profession, he boasted of his treatments and heavily disfigured the realities. According to Kate Teltscher, an expert on British-Asian culture exchange, Mahomed mentioned in one of his publications that he could cure “all manner of complaints from asthma, paralysis, rheumatism, sprains, and nervous disorders to piles, sore thumbs, loss of voice, and cricks in the neck.”
He packed his bags again and moved to Brighton with his wife and kids, where he set up his gateway to fame – Mahomed’s Baths. Here is where the real business went down. Among many other “treatments”, Mahomed’s Baths offered herbal steam baths and his trademark champissage. Squeezing the ‘Indian Method’ USP, he and his wife advertised their new venture as something that was unattainable elsewhere, unless one was to travel to India.
Englishmen flocked to the bathhouse in hopes of experiencing the ‘Indian Medicated Vapour Bath’ and other shampooing treatments with Indian medicinal oils. The recognition, however, started seeming insufficient to Mahomed, as he now ever-so-humbly (or not) began to refer to and advertise himself as ‘Shampooing Surgeon’. The buck, however, didn’t stop there. Staying true to his eccentric character, he published another book in 1820 with a rather self-explanatory title, ‘Cases Cured by Sake Dean Mahomed, Shampooing Surgeon, and Inventor of the Indian Medicated Vapour and Sea-Water Baths’.
As his clientele morphed into a more elite crowd, Mahomed directed his new-found fame towards furthering his bathhouse. With the testimonies of King George IV and King Wiliam IV in his favour, he was now unstoppable. Hospitals now referred patients to him and sometimes also called him ‘Dr Brighton’. He published yet another book, this time titled, ‘Shampooing, or Benefits Resulting From The Use of Indian Medicated Vapour Bath’.
As years went by, the act of shampooing evolved closer to what we do today – use a soapy substance to lather and rid our hair of dirt. The inception of its idea, however, remains the story of a young Indian runaway who eloped with an Irish woman, failed as a restaurateur, took England by storm with his champi skills and published books in his free time — a man from Patna called Sake Dean Mahomed.
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