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Other names
Mohammed Ibrahim Palowkar
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
27 Haberdasher’s Street
Shoreditch
London
N1 6EJ
United Kingdom
Place of death
London
Date of time spent in Britain
1833–55
About
Mahomed Ebrahim Palowkar accompanied his father, Abu Syed Palowkar, to Britain in 1833. His father petitioned the East India Company Directors and Board of Control for the dispossession of their family property. Abu Syed left London to return to Bombay in August 1835 after the failure of his mission; however, Mahomed Ebrahim decided to stay in Britain.
Palowkar married Eleanor Deegan, who was Irish, at St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch on 10 February 1835. Palowkar subsequently built up a business as a tobacconist in Bishopsgate, London. He died aged only 44 in July 1855.
His sons did not continue his profession. William worked as a clerk to a general merchant, Ricky as a gasfitter and Mahomed Frederick became a hat-maker, later migrating to Australia abandoning his wife, Elizabeth, and their four children.
During the First World War, due to the hostility they faced from people mistaking their surname for a German name, the family changed their name to Wilson. Four of Elizabeth and Mahomed Palowkar’s children, Edward, Herbert, Harold and Victor, fought in the First World War.
Fisher, Michael, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain, 1600–1857 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004)
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
Banner image credit
Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Hulton Archives via Getty Images
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
