Who brought the first Indian takeaway to Britain

A. Traditionally, the first was Veeraswamy's of Piccadilly in the early 1900s. The first, however, was a curry house opened in London by Sake Dean Mahomed a century before.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Q. Who was he

A. A fascinating character. Mahomed, born 1759, served with distinction as a boy soldier in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company and was taken under the wing of his commanding officer, who in 1784 sent him to Ireland to perfect his English. There he met Jane Daly, and they eloped to Brighton.

Q. A fashionable resort

A. Indeed. His arrival there in 1786 coincided with a great fashion for all things Indian, driven principally by the Prince of Wales and the construction of the Brighton Pavilion, which was modelled on Indian palaces. (Click here for a feature on the Pavilion).

This was an era when seaside resorts were becoming the places for those wishing to 'take the cure' - often a euphemism for sobering up, drying out and banishing the effects of food and drink.

Brighton was no exception - and Mahomed spotted his main chance to offer a cure for gout, introducing innovative Indian techniques of steam baths with scented oils and body massages to visiting hypochondriacs. He called it 'shampoo surgery'.

Q. It was popular

A. Not at first - but Mahomed soon put that right by offering free consultations. How could the ailing gentry and aristocracy resist Trade grew and then came to jewel in the crown - the Prince Regent (later George IV) visited his massage parlour and, in recognition of the Mahomed's ability to alleviate gout, aches, sprains, lameness, rheumatism and the effects of the common cold, he was appointed Shampoo Surgeon to the Prince.

Q. This is a joke, isn't it

A. No - the prince was a dedicated follower of Mahomed's methods. In fact, Mahomed even kept the title during the reign of William IV (1830-7). Regency society flocked to his baths on the seafront for his patented 'Indian Medicated Vapour Baths'. Prime Minister Robert Peel and Napoleon III were among them. He became so successful that he expanded to London, open a second establishment in Ryder Street, St James's, in 1830. And that's not all ...

Q. What else

A. There were other reasons for his fame. In 1794 he had published, to wide acclaim, an account of his travels on the Indian sub-continent and his observations of the British conquest of India from an Indian's perspective. The Travels of Dean Mahomed made him the first Indian author to be published in English.

Q. And this Indian takeaway

A. In 1809, he opened Dean Mahomed's Hindustani Coffee House in George Street, London. Customers could either eat there or take their meals home.

Q. Another amazing success

A. No. It shut in 1812, bankrupting Mahomed. By the time he died in 1851, the Victorian age was in full swing and the fashion for shampoo surgery was over. But the age of the British biryani was beckoning ...

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Steve Cunningham