February 2025
In 1891 Adam Mahomed, John Silva and Agnes Fleming were raided by police on the basis of ‘numerous complaints that the house (in which they lived) … was the nightly haunt of Indians and abandoned women who resorted thither to spend their nights in drunkenness and debauchery.’
On entering the building, the police ‘discovered, amid general filth, a quantity of bottles of chutney sauce, the corks of which were flying in all directions, exposing the contents in a state of advanced decomposition. Mahomed said that he sold this stuff while the corks remained in the bottles and thus earned his living.’ Mohamed was a hawker – a travelling salesman – as were many other Indians, Afghans and Syrians in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Australia. His stock in trade was chutney.
This court proceedings reads like a straightforward, if colourful, report of ‘immoral behaviour’ and a want of hygiene in preparation of food being commercially peddled. It is much more. It was held in a racialized context.
