The Reverend James Mahomed, Chaplain to the London Hospital | Blogs from the Archives

In our last blog post, we looked at how Christmas has been celebrated in hospitals across the NHS. This month, we are focusing down on a single individual, and telling the story of the man who was appointed 135 years ago this week as the Chaplain of the London (now the Royal London) Hospital in Whitechapel.

Today, the Chaplaincy service for Barts Health NHS Trust encompasses a team made up of full-time, part-time and trained volunteer professionals from all over the world, who ensure that patients, staff, relatives and friends in our hospitals are able to receive the support they need from representatives of various faiths and beliefs. Our hospitals have employed a multi-faith chaplaincy team since around the late 1990s. In the late 19th century, despite a long history at the hospital of providing culturally and religiously specific care for patients of many faiths, there was still a single chaplain at the London Hospital, who was always an Anglican clergyman.

Reverend James Dean Kerriman Mahomed was Chaplain of the London Hospital from 1890 to 1898. James was the grandson of Sake Dean Mahomed (1759-1851), also known as Shekh Din Muhammôd, who was the first Indian to write a book in English and who had opened England’s first Indian takeaway restaurant and first ‘shampooing vapour masseur bath’, where clientele included George IV and William IV. Dean Mahomed converted from converted from Islam to Protestant Christianity in 1786, around the time of his marriage to Jane Daly, an Irish Protestant, and his seven children with Jane were brought up as Christians.

His grandson James DK Mahomed was born in 1853 in Brighton, near to the fencing, gymnastics, boxing and callisthenics academy in Hove, run by his father Frederick, son of Dean Mahomed. Several of Frederick's children went on to notable careers: James’ brother, Frederick Henry Horatio Akbar Mahomed , became a doctor, studying at Guy’s Hospital, London, where he did pioneering work on hypertension.

After studying at Keble College, James was ordained a minister of the Church of England. His first clerical posts were in the East End, as curate at St Anne's, Limehouse and at St Philip’s, Stepney Way, Whitechapel (now the Whitechapel Library of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, QMUL), before he moved to a post at St Anne’s, Highgate.

On 7 January 1890, James' return to the East End was agreed when he was unanimously confirmed as Chaplain to the London Hospital, succeeding against a very strong field of candidates, and was given a five-year appointment. The previous incumbent had left following a dispute with the Hospital’s governors but James promised "to carry out his duties in a manner that would justify the confidence that they [the governors] had shown in him."

Reverend Mahomed’s original five-year appointment was extended, and he remained in post for the next eight years. He oversaw the opening of the new hospital chapel in the hospital's front entrance block in June 1891, with a sermon preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In addition to his chaplaincy role, James was active in the management of the Samaritan Society, a charity linked to the hospital which provided social welfare amenities for London Hospital patients (and continues to do so today). James gave up the hospital chaplaincy in 1898 to become Vicar of Ingham in Norfolk. In his later years, he returned to where he had grown up, becoming Vicar of Hove in Sussex before his death in 1935.