In Defence of Christmas Pudding - Part Two

The Australian newspapers of the 1830s carried advertisements for all the ingredients necessary for a luxurious Christmas pudding – French plumbs, Turkey figs, Zante (Greek), currants and raisins from Spain, Smyrna (Turkey) or South Africa, along with candied orange, lemon and citron peel, and imported spices – making it an exotic and likely expensive indulgence.

Australia began producing its own dried vine fruits in the 1880s on the Murray River at Renmark and Mildura, thanks to the irrigation scheme promoted by Alfred Deakin and realised by the Canadian Chaffey brothers.[1] As Wishart explains the irrigation scheme itself was less than successful and the dried fruits industry ‘developed by default as the most reliable and practical way of getting fruit to markets on the coast’.[2] From the commencement nearly 80 per cent of production was exported[3] and, by the early twentieth century, Australia was the Empire’s largest dried vine-fruits producer.[4] But the industry had its ups and downs. The economic depression of the 1890s saw the Chaffeys go bankrupt and a Royal Commission set up to inquire into the failures of the irrigation scheme. Meanwhile. the prices for dried fruits plummeted and the Australian Dried Fruits Association was formed in 1907 to protect the interests of farmers.

The market for Australian dried fruit boomed and the returns skyrocketed during the First World War when products from traditional suppliers, such as Greece and Turkey were interrupted.[5] However, by 1923, an ill-conceived post-war soldier settlement scheme, designed to help returned service men establish themselves on the land in the area known as ‘Sunraysia’, resulted in dramatically increased production and an inevitable plunge in prices. A solution to the industry’s woes lay in promoting Australian dried fruit both overseas, especially in Britain, and in the local market, with Christmas pudding at the forefront.

The idea that British consumers should give preference to goods produced in those countries which were members of the Empire had a long history, and by 1850 the Christmas pudding, with its wide range of ingredients from all over the Empire, was well-established as a symbol of both nation, as in Britain, and its Imperial wealth.[6]

After Federation (1901) the Australian government lobbied hard for preferential trade agreements with Britain to give special access to Australian primary produce and raw materials. There was also considerable public enthusiasm in Britain for the promotion of Empire goods. For example, The British Women’s Patriotic League held the first Empire Shopping Week in London in 1922 to coincide with Empire Day in May.[7]

The entry of Californian growers into the British market in 1924 presented a significant challenge to Australia producers, who counteracted with heavy advertising.[8] The theme of the Lord Mayor’s Show in London in 1924 was ‘Imperial Trade’. Australia contributed a giant Christmas pudding, paraded through the streets on Lord Mayor’s Day drawn by six white horses (one for each state) and bearing the slogan 'Make your Christmas Pudding of Empire Products’. From the illustration below it is clear that, at least in the minds of Australians, it could just as easily have been the promotion of an Australian Christmas Pudding. As Ivan Day describes it the pudding was ‘spiked’ with both the Australian flag and the Union Jack and sandwiched between a stuffed emu and a stuffed kangaroo.[9]

From http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-family-and-empire-christmas-pudding.html

The British government was determined to maintain a policy of free trade but in 1926 bowed to continuing pressure from members of the Empire for preferential access to British markets by setting up the Empire Marketing Board to formally promote empire products.[10] Again, the Christmas pudding made a significant and highly successful contribution to the Board’s efforts. The publishing of the recipe for the King’s Christmas Pudding, based on a recipe supplied by the royal chef André Cédard, in 1927, was one of the highlights of their promotional activities. For the British audience the preparation of the Christmas Pudding was portrayed as uniting the royal family, the nuclear family, the national family and the Empire family.[11]

Meanwhile, in Australia, the Christmas Pudding was regarded as less Imperial and more national. Cyril Pearl writing in Wild Men of Sydney claims: ‘The word “Empire” had few sentimental overtones in the ‘80s [1880s]. It had not yet been linked with God and the throne. The weaving of the bonds of Empire were done by hard-headed manufacturers and merchants who made no bones about their purpose’.[12]

As early as 1904 Perrybingle, writing in the Weekly Times (Melbourne), commented on the promotion in Britain of an ‘all-British pudding’: 

Christmas pudding and Imperial sentiment do not appear to have much to do, one with each other, but as Imperialism in these days is, in some quarters, a subject always uppermost, we find one English paper seriously discussing a discovery. It was said “the English people have had, for a long time, to depend upon the foreigner for many of the ingredients that make up 'our national delicacy'" – meaning plum pudding, not refinement in the abstract. “It is pleasant knowing,” continued the writer, “that English people may now consume an all-British pudding.” The flour, it appears is imported into England from Canada, the suet is a home production, the sugar is obtained from the West Indies, and the citron peel and raisins from Australia. The argument seems to be that a patriotic pudding should feed Imperial thought.

While the writer acknowledged that Australians in general and ‘our friends at Mildura’ in particular would no doubt welcome increased sales of citron peel and raisins, and to that extent encourage ‘Imperial feeding’, nonetheless ‘the Imperialists should remember that we in Australia can make our own Christmas pudding entirely without the foreigner, for the whole of the ingredients mentioned are produced within our own country. Pudding and patriotism may be nearer allied than pudding and Imperialism.’[13] These comments carry the clear implication that Christmas pudding could be considered as an Australian pudding and also that the British Christmas pudding might more correctly be called the Australian Christmas pudding, a symbol of Australia's progress and achievements, and something of which the new nation could be proud. 

The Empire Marketing Board’s activities extended to Australia but enthusiasm for empire was tempered here. As Gavin Souter says of the celebration of Empire Day (first introduced in 1905) ‘such was the duality of Australian self-perception that the nation did not seem to be diminished by this celebration of empire. On the contrary, it was enhanced: as far as most Australians were concerned, to praise the whole was automatically to praise the part’.[14] Helping Australia could also be interpreted as a way of helping the Empire. 

While the Empire Marketing Board was promoting imperialism, Australians were being encouraged to buy local. For example, The Australian Made Preference League was founded in New South Wales in 1924, with the pledge: 

I believe Australia can become self-sufficient and prosperous through the development of primary and secondary industries; to assist that end I pledge myself to give reference at all times to “Australian-made” goods and products, all things being equal, and never to make a purchase without stating “Australian-made preferred”.[15] 

Flinders Street Station c. 1925 VPRS 12800/P1, H1614.
https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/eat-more-fruit

Similarly, in her introduction to A Sunshine Cookery Book, a publication of the Australian Dried Fruits Association, Flora Pell encouraged the use of local products, and by extension the making of Christmas pudding, as a patriotic act:

by making daily use of these appetising and nourishing fruits, you will not only be building up your own health, but will be assisting in maintaining a valuable national industry with which the successful repatriation of large numbers of returned soldiers in inseparably bound up.[16]

Despite all these initiatives, the soldier settlement scheme was a spectacular failure. The Empire Marketing Board was wound up in 1933 after tariffs were introduced and gradually the idea of Christmas pudding as a symbol of Australian patriotism seems to have faded away. Florence James writing in The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1938 thought Australians should make their own traditional Christmas and suggested jellied turkey followed by fruit salad flavoured with passionfruit, pineapple and paw-paw which may have been exotic for the times.[17] Similarly, Mary Forbes proposed a frozen pudding set with gelatine.[18] Once refrigeration became common, recipes for chilled and frozen puddings appeared regularly but none of these achieved any level of popularity, certainly not enough to become a widely recognised ‘tradition’.[19] Various forms of commercially pre-prepared puddings either canned or fresh have been marketed over the years. The most common home-made alternative to Christmas pudding today is more likely to be pavlova or trifle.

So why does the Christmas pudding ‘tradition’ persist? It remains a perennial symbol of the Christmas season even though incongruous in the Australian climate, and even though it may not be widely consumed.

In Australia, in 2019, a decent percentage of Australians do not celebrate Christmas at all and those who do bring with them many more traditions than the ones bequeathed by our British colonisers. That said of course, for no small proportion of the population honouring British traditions is honouring their personal ancestry. 

Part of the reason for the longevity of a ‘traditional’ Christmas pudding is surely that it tastes good. With all the improvements in kitchen technology a boiled pudding may not be any easier to prepare today than it was in 1920 but it can be made well before the hot weather commences, stored in the refrigerator until required, and then reheated in the microwave. Its easy portability also remains one of its more desirable characteristics. No less important, it can still be made from ingredients sourced from local producers. As its history in Australia suggests, eating plum pudding at Christmas can hardly be taken as evidence that Australians are not at home here. Making and eating Christmas pudding remains more aligned to patriotism than to imperialism.

So rather than ask why some of us still persist with a tradition which seems outdated and unsuitable perhaps we should ask why not. In this case the story of the Christmas pudding is a very good example of Bell and Valentine’s contention that ‘the history of what we eat is the history of the nation’.[20] You do not have to like Christmas pudding or eat Christmas pudding or have Anglo-British ancestry to know that the Australian celebration of Christmas is grounded in an Anglo-British heritage and recognise Christmas pudding as a reminder of that heritage. Whether we like it or not Christmas pudding acts as a flag, a symbol of nationalism found in the routines of everyday life, to us, Australians, and to other nations, which signals our cultural and historical heritage.[21]

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[1]Evening Journal (Adelaide) 8 May 1873, p. 2 reports the first consignment of Australian raisins sent to London.

[2]Alison Wishart, 2016. ‘“Bottled Sunshine”: The Birth of the Australian Dried Fruits Industry’, Locale: The Australasian–Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies, 6, pp. 41–70.

[3]Wishart, 51

[4]Kaori O’Connor. 2009. ‘The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globilization, Recipes and the Commodities of Empire’, Journal of Colonial History 4, p.140.

[5]Wishart, p. 49

[6]O’Connor, pp. 132–3.

[7]O’Connor, p.139. See also Frank Trentmann. 2007. ‘Before “fair trade”: Empire, Free Trade and the Moral Economies of Food in the Modern World’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25, pp. 1079–1102, in particular pp.1082–1086.

[8]O’Connor, p.140.

[9]http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-family-and-empire-christmas-pudding.html

[10]As Ward puts it the Empire Marketing Board ‘operated not through preferences but through propaganda’. Stuart Ward. 2001. ‘Sentiment and Self-Interest. The Imperial Ideal in Anglo-Australian Commercial Culture’, Australian Historical Studies 32 (116): pp. 93–4.

[11]O’Connor, p.153. For more on the Empire Marketing Board see Felicity Barnes. 2014. ‘Bringing Another Empire Alive? The Empire Marketing Board and the Construction of Dominion Identity, 1926–33’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42 (1), pp. 61–85; David Meredith. 1987. ‘Imperial Images: The Empire Marketing Board, 1926–33’, History Today, January, pp.30–36.

[12]Cyril Pearl. 1970. Wild Men of Sydney, Universal Books, p. 17.

[13]‘Perrybingle Papers’, Weekly Times (Melbourne), 31 December 1904, p. 21.

[14]Gavin Souter. 2001. Lion and Kangaroo. The Initiation of Australia, Melbourne: Text, p.129

[15]https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52810486/view?partId=nla.obj-96295103#page/n22/mode/1up

[16]Flora Pell, forward to A Sunshine Cookery Book, c. 1926, quoted in Wishart, p.59.

[17]Florence James, ‘Australians Should Make Their Own Christmas Tradition’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 24 December 1938, p.14.

[18]Mary Forbes, ‘Such a Delicious Christmas Dinner’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 16 December 1939, p. 5.

[19]For example, Australian Women’s Weekly, 21 December 1946, p. 73; 20 December 1947, p. 38; 6 November 1968, p. 8

[20]David Bell and Gill Valentine .1997. Consuming Geographies, London: Routledge, p.168.

[21]Michael Billig. 1995. Banal Nationalism, London: Sage.

In Defence of Christmas Pudding - Part One.

In One Continuous Picnic, Michael Symons calls the eating of Christmas pudding as part of an Australian Christmas ‘[t]he continuation of a quite unseasonable feast’ and suggests this eating of ‘plum pudding at 100 degrees in the shade’ is ‘perhaps the most oft-remarked Australian food oddity’. While he condemns the practice as eating against both the climate and the seasons he also sees it as ‘clear evidence that we had not made a home here’.[1] Other commentators similarly deride continuing what they see as imported traditions as symbolic of an inability to shake off the shackles of Empire. For Charmaine O’Brien, for example, eating Christmas pudding on Christmas Day represented ‘a connection to the values of Empire, a way of staking a claim to the mission of “upholding civilisation” on the far side of the world: weather be damned, this was serious cultural nourishment’.[2]

There is however ample evidence to suggest that, at least from the middle of the nineteenth-century, colonists in Australia were beginning to see their Christmas traditions as Australian rather than simply imitations of imported practices and were starting to reinterpret their relationship with ‘home’. When Ken Inglis says, ‘it would long be an Australian tradition to enjoy both the heavy Christmas dinner and the absurdity of it’[3] the important point is that, at least by the 1870s, colonists did appreciate the absurdity of the practice but persevered with it nonetheless. Subsequently, the Christmas pudding also became a symbol of Australian progress and national pride.

By the time English colonists arrived here in 1788 plum pudding was already a well-established celebratory dish for any festive occasion.[4] The connection with Christmas was cemented with the publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) and the magazine, which he ‘conceived, commissioned, and compiled’, ‘Household Words’ (first published 1850).[5] As O’Connor notes 

The Christmas issues of Household Words are of particular interest, for they show the Dickensian English Christmas in the process of construction and also demonstrate the extent to which Christmas, the Christmas pudding, nationalism, commerce, and empire were already, by 1850, conflated in the common culture.[6]

So, we might well ask what other dish could Australian colonists have served at Christmas dinner? A steaming boiled fruit pudding might well be considered 'a triumph of sentiment over environment' [7] but what other suitably celebratory dishes were there which didn’t involve literally slaving over a hot stove? What other pudding would substitute in a world without refrigeration and limited kitchen facilities? Fresh or stewed fruits with blancmange or creamed rice might be alternatives but hardly scream celebration.[8] Christmas plum pudding also had the advantage of being portable, prepared well ahead of time and acceptable to eat at room temperature.

One local tradition was celebrating Christmas out of doors. As Inglis demonstrates eating outside became accepted practice, and, for those born in the colonies, ‘knowing no other climate or society’ this form of Christmas festivity was not perceived as ‘an exotic institution transplanted but a round of activities performed spontaneously by Australians’.[9] While it was true that it was ‘no easy matter to set about the celebration of the holiday in the true English style’ it had to be admitted that ‘the substitute may, in all reality, be as good as the original; and to a native Australian may be far better than a vain and imperfect mimicry of customs his climate and his hemisphere will never permit him to reproduce’.[10] By 1859, in an article entitled ‘The Comicalities of an Antipodean Christmas’, the Argus admitted that ‘[i]n some sense an Australian Christmas is slowly being established’ conceding that ‘Plum pudding may be eaten in the open air’ (emphasis in the original).[11]

In the 1860s, the Illustrated Sydney News was extolling the pleasures of the Australian Christmas:

Christmas is bright and sunny; the flowers of midsummer deck the garden; all nature seems to woo us to enjoy ourselves out of doors and all seem eager to respond to the invitation – hence picnics and excursions by land and water are arranged as being a propos of an Australian Christmas.[12]

and illustrated the same with this sketch which clearly shows (at bottom right) a Christmas pudding being consumed in the great outdoors.

Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that in Melbourne on Christmas Day ‘thousands made their way out of town to sylvan retreats or sea-side nooks in which to enjoy their Christmas pudding’.[13]

In December 1866 readers of the Illustrated Sydney News were assured that: 

We know of no English institution which has become so thoroughly acclimatised … Christmas cheer may be as well enjoyed under the shade of a spreading gum tree as cooped up in the heated atmosphere of a close room; and if it is not the most fashionable way of spending the day, it is at least the most seasonable and the most Australian, and as such we feel no hesitation on recommending it.[14]

Of course, not everyone thought the traditional Christmas meal worth preserving. There were, no doubt, many who would have agreed that ‘no dish was ever invented so wholly unsuited to the tropics as plum pudding’.[15] Melbourne Punch claimed the heavy traditional fare, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and Christmas dinner, was both ‘dangerous to health and fatal to festivity’ but was optimistic that change would come ‘when we have sense enough and self-reliance enough to form our own ideals, and to uphold them’ and Australians would eventually turn to ‘light meals, light cakes and unnumbered fruits’.[16]

However, as the preceding illustrations demonstrate, there is evidence to suggest that in the years before Federation, as Nicole Anae puts it, the Christmas pudding was emerging as ‘a uniquely ambivalent “national dish’”’.[17] Anae interrogates selected verse-poetry of the late nineteenth-century and argues that it ‘offers a rich memorialization of the competing struggles between, on the one hand, the communal preserving of English modes of Christmas observance practices as the reference point for colonial celebrations, and, on the other, the communal realisation of the incongruity of such attempts in a new and alien land.’[18] The pudding becomes ‘both a sign of the “Mother Country” on the one hand and a problematic pejorative of Australian colonial identity on the other’. In other words, the Christmas pudding was becoming a symbol of not just John Bull Englishness and Old England[19] but was also being used to define Australian-ness as Australians began to see themselves as both part of the ‘imagined community’ of the Empire and their own colonial ‘imagined community’.[20] Anae’s discussion and the examples above also confirm that we should not underestimate the role of the press in creating and fostering these ideas of imagined communities.[21]

By the 1880s one newspaper declared: ‘We delight in keeping up the sacred festival of Christmas and we have transferred as a national heritage the home “bill of fare” for merry Christmas as the proper cheer for Christmas in the Antipodes.’[22] While the coming together of the Australian colonies to form one nation in 1901 was perhaps the realisation of the colonial ‘imagined community’ if anything Federation complicated the reconciliation of this community with the community of the Empire.[23] The Christmas pudding continued as a symbol of this ambiguity.

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[1]Michael Symons. 2007. One Continuous Picnic. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, p. 27.

[2]Charmaine O’Brien. 2016. The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788–1901. London: Rowan and Littlefield, p. 127.

[3]Kenneth Stanley Inglis. 1974. The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History, 1788–1870.Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, p. 109.

[4]Ivan Day, ‘One family and Empire Christmas Pudding’, 30 August 2012, http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-family-and-empire-christmas-pudding.html Ivan Day’s wonderful blog, Food History Jottings, has two fascinating articles (the first of these is http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.com/2012/02/pudding-king.html) on plum pudding with many links to other resources.

[5]Kaori O’Connor. 2009. ‘The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globilization, Recipes and the Commodities of Empire’, Journal of Colonial History 4, pp. 127–155.

[6]O’Connor, p. 132.

[7]Inglis, p. 109.

[8]‘The Christmas Dinner’, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 22 December 1883, p. 1186.

[9]Inglis, pp. 109, 110.

[10]‘The Empire Christmas’, Empire, 26 December 1853, p. 2.

[11]‘The Comicalities of the Antipodean Christmas’, Argus, 27 December 1859, p. 4.

[12]‘Christmas in Australia’, Illustrated Sydney News, 16 December 1865, p. 3 and 8.

[13]‘Our Melbourne Letter’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 Jan 1870, p.  5. See also ‘The Christmas Holidays’ Argus,27 December 1873, p. 5: 'On Christmas Day … many families spent the day in the open air, in marine excursions and otherwise, carrying their previously boiled Christmas pudding with them'. The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser even suggested that cold plum pudding cut into slices and fried in a little butter then sprinkled with sugar ‘is preferred by many persons to boiled pudding’ (22 December 1883, p. 1186.)

[14]‘Pic-Nic Party’, Illustrated Sydney News, 15 December 1866, p. 3.

[15]‘John Bull in the Colonies’, Empire, 27 March 1861,p. 2.

[16]‘Christmas in Australia’ Melbourne Punch,28 December 1893 p. 4

[17]Nicole Anae. 2018. '“101 in the Shade”: Christmas Pudding in Australian Popular and Literary Verse 1830–1910', in  The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food, Lorna Piatti-Farnell And Donna Lee Brien (eds) New York: Routledge, pp. 113–126.

[18]Anae, p. 123.

[19]‘The Christmas Pudding’, Geelong Advertiser, 25 December 1849, p.1.

[20]As in Benedict Anderson’s notion of the nation as an ‘imagined community’. Benedict Anderson. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed.,Verso: London and New York.

[21]See Anderson. Also Peter Putnis, 2010.  ‘News, Time and Imagined Community in Colonial Australia’, Media History, 16 (2), pp. 153-170.

[22]‘The Christmas Dinner’, The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 22 December 1881, p. 1186.

[23]See essays in Australian Historical Studies 2001, 32 (116): Neville Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity. The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography’,pp. 76–90; Stuart Ward, ‘Sentiment and Self-Interest. The Imperial Ideal in Anglo-Australian Commercial Culture’, pp. 91–108.; John Rickard, ‘Imagining the Unimaginable?’, pp. 128–131.

Kabell Mockbell and his coffee empire. Part 2.

Kabell Mockbell began his coffee empire in the Imperial Arcade in Sydney. In August 1894 he was advertising real pure mocha coffee 'as supplied to the best restaurants in Paris' in the Sydney Morning Herald (1 August). He sold green beans, freshly roasted beans and ground coffee and guaranteed that it was free from chicory or any other form of adulteration. Coffee lovers were urged to visit Mockbell's 'nicely fitted rooms' to imbibe coffee made in true Parisian style, and his coffee was recommended as a brain stimulant and an antidote to alcohol. Potential patrons were advised that only coffee, cake or pastry were served - no tea or cocoa (Truth, 10 March 1895). In April 1896 Truth reported on the opening of 'Mockbell Bros. Oriental Cafe Salon' in the basement of the Imperial Arcade - a most 'recherché affair' involving musical entertainment and a supper, attended by 250 guests with Mr. J. C. Neild, MLA officiating. 

This article raises two interesting issues. Firstly it confirms that Mockbell quickly established important connections in Sydney - Neild (who you can read about here) was an interesting character in his own right - and secondly introduces the mystery of Mockbell and his brother.

It is clear that Mockbell began his business in partnership with someone, if only because they subsequently came to a parting of the ways. The Imperial Arcade coffee business continued to trade and advertise as Mockbell Brothers selling Fez brand coffee until Kabell Mockbell goes into voluntary bankruptcy in May 1901. T. Mockbell then makes it clear that he has no connection whatsoever with any K. Mockbell (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 1901).
The following May (Freeman's Journal, 13 May 1902) Kabell makes this announcement

Mr. Kabell Mockbell who opened business in the Imperial Arcade in 1894 and successfully carried it out until 1898 has been appointed manager of the Mocha Coffee Company, 88 King Street.

As we shall see it is indeed possible that Kabell severed his connection with the coffee business in 1898. From 1902 until 1906 the Mockbell 'brothers' traded in opposition to one another, both continually reiterating that they had no connection to the other. By 1904 Thabet Suby Mockbell has changed the name of the Imperial Arcade business to 'Suby's Cafe' (Freeman's Journal, 2 January 1904) but it would appear that the two 'brothers' are not on friendly terms. Things come to a head in 1906 when the Sydney Morning Herald  (3 March 1906) reports court proceedings taken by Kabell. The article states  that 'about 5 years ago' Kabell and a man named Thabet Suby were in a partnership which was dissolved.  Encountering each other recently in the street Thabet Suby has called Kabell 'insulting names' and threatened to kill him in a conversation reportedly conducted in Arabic.  In the same issue of the paper Kabell announces that he has taken over the Imperial Arcade business. Later that year Thabet Suby Mockbell's wife sues for divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, cruelty and adultery (Evening News, 30 November 1906).

That Thabet Suby is not Kabell's brother seems almost certain but who knows where the two met and how they became partners. The only other reference I have found is to Thabet Suby who enlisted in the AIF in Perth in 1915. On his enlistment papers his place of birth is given as Bombay, his age is recorded as 35 (although he is almost certainly older than that) and his occupation is given as 'tea and coffee merchant'.

Mockbell's relationship and dealings with Thabet Suby presumably started to deteriorate at the same time as his business interests started to expand. The Evening News of 22 July 1898 announced the opening of the factory of the Stamboul and Egyptian Cigarette Company, manufacturers of Fez brand cigarettes. Mockbell had established the local industry of cigarette making in William Street, manufacturing handmade cigarettes made from the best Turkish leaf. Originally employing 100 people it was hoped that 'with the wider scope federation would afford' he would eventually have 1000 employees. The opening ceremony was conducted by Edmund Barton (soon to become Australia's first prime minister) in the company of many notable figures including the Turkish and Italian consuls and the local member, Alderman John Norton, further evidence of Mockbell's network of connections. Everyone drank a toast to Federation and Kabell presented Barton with a silver cigarette holder and a cigarette case inscribed 'to the First of Australians' to commemorate the event. (see also Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 1898; Truth, 24 July 1898)

Despite Mockbell's enthusiasm the cigarette business was short lived. In August 1899 the Evening News (4 August) was reporting that Kabell Mockbell and Julius Kemp were facing court charged with having conspired together 'to cheat and defraud the Stamboul and Egyptian Cigarette Co. Ltd. and the liquidator John Ramsay'. The whole story takes quite a bit of piecing together. It appears that Kemp and his wife had been brought to Sydney from Alexandria by Mockbell and the fraud in some way involved the payment to Kemp of wages and expenses. Further court proceedings revolved around charges of conspiracy and concerned various members of the local Syrian community who were shareholders in the cigarette company. The coffee business also appears to have been implicated in the bankruptcy (see Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1900 for notice of the dissolution of the partnership between T. Mockbell and J. Ramsay). Mockbell and Kemp are finally acquitted and Kabel turns his attention back to expanding his coffee business.

With the Thabet Suby affair behind him Mockbell's coffee empire goes from strength to strength. By 1914, according to the Sands Directory for that year, he has premises in Hoskin Place (off 86 Pitt Street), at 11 Pitt Street (near Circular Quay), 63 - 65 King Street, Angel Place (off 125 Pitt Street), 75 Elizabeth Street and at 192 Sussex Street.  That year, 1914, also saw him heading to Norfolk Island on behalf of the Federal Government to report on the possibilities for coffee cultivation there (Sunday Times, 1 March 1914). He reported back that there was nowhere more suitable for coffee growing in the southern hemisphere, all that was required to produce enough coffee to meet Australia's needs was systematic management and intense cultivation (Sydney Morning Herald , 23 March 1914;  Evening News, 23 March 1914). His report is available at the National Archives.

It would seem that even a hundred years ago Sydney was mad for coffee. From the very beginning Mockbell offered elaborate facilities to cater for large numbers of people. The original Oriental Cafe Salon in the Imperial Arcade boasted a ladies salon, a smoking room and both ladies' and gentlemen's lavatories  (which were perhaps a rarity elsewhere?) and was large enough to accommodate the 250 guests who attended the opening (Truth, 12 April 1896). When he opened the cafe at the bottom of Pitt Street, near Circular Quay, Mockbell advertised that it provided a separate room for ladies (with a separate entrance) and a gentlemen's smoking lounge, with tobacco of all kinds available for purchase, where dominoes could be played. He also recommend that ladies could have their parcels directed to the cafe without charge and that the cafe made an ideal stop on the way home after the theatre (especially for those catching the steam ferry).The premises were large, well lit and airy (Sydney Morning Herald ,28 February 1907; Evening News, 28 February 1907). The cafe in Angel Place was both an ideal business men's eating place and a Bohemian rendezvous (Sydney Morning Herald, 22 May 1911). His coffee lounges offered 'brain workers' a light lunch, a smoke, a game of dominoes and a coffee to see them through the afternoon (Evening News, 8 January 1919). Mockbell was nothing if not a shrewd promoter.

What is especially remarkable is the size of some of his cafes. In September 1913 he announced the opening of the new Commerce Cafe in Market Street which had accommodation for 200 people (Evening News, 22 September 1913). His coffee lounge in the basement of Daking House near Central railway station could cater for 600 people at a time (Evening News, 8 January 1919) and his premises at Wingello House in Angel Place could seat 1000! (Sydney Morning Herald , 30 August 1926).

By October 1930 there are eight Mockbell's coffee lounges scattered across the city (Daily Commercial News and Shipping List,  29 October 1930) but in July 1931 Mockbell is bankrupt once again (Sydney Morning Herald, 13 July 1931). And again the exact details of how this comes about are hard to piece together by just relying on mentions in the press. It appears that some time in 1920 Mockbell's business (Mockbell's Mocha Coffee Company) was formed into a limited company (Mockbell's Limited) and subsequently Kabell had a falling out with the directors. The consequence appears to be that he operated some coffee houses in his own right and some through the limited company. Around this time he also became involved with the Paris House restaurant and with La Corniche at Mona Vale. Although it isn't entirely clear I think this is the same La Corniche which had been started by Henri Rainaud around 1905/6. How or why Kabell became involved in this venture I do not know.

The Paris House connection is explained in the following extract from Sydney Looks Back (Isidore Brodsky, Angus & Robertson, 1957, pp. 128 - 129)

Ruskin Rowe, the architect, was having anxious moments in providing new and alternative accommodation for Mockbell, one of whose coffee and horseshoe-roll houses was blocking the clearing of the site for the New South Wales Government Savings Bank, now the Commonwealth Savings Bank, bounded by Castlereagh Street, Martin Place and Elizabeth Street. Jim Dooley, who was the State Premier, had already laid the foundation stone of the new project in 1922.

"In the end we had to persuade Mockbell to accept the old Paris House, though he had a seventeen-year lease to run”, Rowe said. “We refitted Paris House to give the show a good start; generals, admirals, the judiciary, the Premier, George Fuller, Danny Levy, and the town leaders were invited to the opening. Wonderful food and wine put everyone in a grand mood, and Mockbell was called upon to reply to a hearty toast. He spoke feelingly from the heart, in broken English, and praised everyone unstintingly, except the plumber, whom he had found asleep on the roof.”

Mockbell must have been responsible, in an indirect way, for the dissolving of many of the city’s tangled legal problems over a cup of coffee, for his was the home of the articled clerk and the law generally.

Mockbell claimed that both La Corniche and Paris House had been viable propositions up until 1927/28 but had more recently been running at a loss. Paris House (the subject of an upcoming post) had been part of the Sydney restaurant scene for nearly half a century when it finally closed its doors in 1931 (Burrowa News, 7 August 1931).

The Mockbell name struggled on. The limited company was in business at least until the late 1940s but the Mockbell family's attempts to keep trading were unsuccessful with Kabell's wife being declared bankrupt in 1935.

One final little snippet of detail about Kabell. A letter to the editor (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1933) describes him as the 'esteemed chef' of the Cercle Français, a Sydney based society for 'musical and literary men', a position which he appears to have held for many years around 1890. The Cercle Français, despite the name, is described as 'a cosmopolitan institution' and appears to have been started in Sydney in 1886 (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June 1887).  It was perhaps a forerunner to the Alliance Française which formally started in Sydney in 1899. The Cercle was distinguished by its excellent dinners - the meal for the Bastille Day celebrations in 1889 was described as neither unduly lavish or ostentatious, rather the menu was 'harmoniously perfect' and worthy of the gastronomic reputation of the club (Sydney Morning Herald, 15 July 1889). Was the man behind the menu Kabell Mockbell? Did he come to Sydney as a chef? Is this is how he made his living before starting his coffee business?

Whatever other skills he may have had Mockbell certainly seems to have made the best of his entrepreneurial talents and he made a significant contribution, in more ways than one, to the Sydney scene.

Kabell Mockbell and his coffee empire. Part 1.

Many memoirs of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s mention Mockbell's coffee salons as popular meeting places in Sydney and I'll write more about his coffee business at a later date. What interests me here is, who was Kabell Mockbell?

Exact details about where he was born are hard to pin down. He applied for citizenship three times and gave conflicting accounts of his origins. He was probably born in Istanbul, and claims to have been a Turkish national. He also states that his mother was Egyptian and he had served time as a cadet with the British military forces in Egypt. On his first application for naturalisation he claims to have been born in Yemen.

Whatever the truth he was a staunch supporter of the Turkish state, a friend of the Turkish ambassador in Sydney and, as his subsequent business interests in Sydney would suggest,  he also had close contacts in Egypt. He enjoyed dressing up in his traditional costume (described as an 'Arab costume of blue embroidered with gold' Sydney Morning Herald,  25 July 1896), he used the 'fez and Arabic writing' as a trade mark on his coffee products and decorated his coffee salons with 'Arabian' decorations (Evening News, 11 September 1896).

It is also difficult to determine when he arrived in Australia, it may have been as early as 1883 or possibly later, in 1890. He was certainly advertising his coffee by 1894 (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 1894). He married in 1907 and he and Adelaide Florence subsequently had three children, Lallah, Kabell junior and Fuad. He first applied for naturalisation in 1904 and was rejected. He applied again in 1914, claiming those indebted to him refused to pay monies owing because he was not a British subject. This application was rejected because at the time Turks were considered enemy subjects as well as being included under the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which limited non-white immigration. His final application in 1926, by which time he was a very successful business man and his status as an enemy subject had changed somewhat, was accepted.

I have only uncovered the bare bones of Mockbell's history, but the change in his status and the challenges of being a Muslim, dark skinned and a wheeler dealer business man in Sydney in the years between Federation and the beginning of the Second World War make for an interesting story.

Kabell Mockbell appears to have made himself a significant figure Sydney in the early days of the twentieth century. Although he was only 5' 1" he made his presence felt. For example the Evening News reported his enthusiasm over the adoption of constitutional government by the Ottoman Empire in 1908 and what he hoped would be accomplished 'with the sympathy and diplomatic help' of the British, now that the Turk was civilised and 'no longer a ferocious and terrible monster' (Evening News, 26 January 1909). In the light of subsequent events it is poignant to read Kabelespousing his respect and reverence for Great Britain; he would give his last penny and his own life and that of his son in her defence.

The Evening News (25 July 1910) also reported a gathering of 'forty dark skinned representatives of the Ottoman Empire interspersed with a few white Australians' who met at Mockbell's residence in Lavender Bay ('Matoppo'/'Motoppo', 21 Arthur Street) to celebrate the second anniversary of the Ottoman constitution. Among the guests was the Mayor of Redfern, Alderman Leitch, whose municipality was the home of most of Sydney's Ottoman community. Although the Turks were now included in the immigration restriction laws it was noted that they had always proven themselves to be good citizens. The Ottoman ambassador, Arif Nassoor Bey, was quoted as saying

Great Britain stood by us in our past trouble, and with her continued support in the future, we hope to make Turkey advance with a free people, until it is a nation worthy in every sense of the position for which the Young Turk party has aimed.

With the outbreak of hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and Italy, which resulted in the defeat of the Ottomans and their withdrawal from Libya, Mockbell took it upon himself to refute newspaper reports of Turkish barbarity. As a solution to the conflict he proposed that England act as a referee and leave Turkey to work out her conflict with the Italians in her own way, confident that the Turks would be victorious. He called on his fellow Muslims to defend Tripoli and appealed for funds to be donated to the Turkish Relief Fund for soldiers involved in the Balkan War. (Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate, 19 January 1912. The conflict in Libya and the imminent defeat of the Ottomans encouraged nationalist groups in the Balkans to also take up arms against the Ottoman Empire. These conflicts were significant precursors to World War One.)

Mockbell's position as both a loyal Turk and a loyal supporter of the British Empire became more and more compromised and his pronouncements more and more reflective of his crisis of allegiance.
In a letter to the editor of the Evening News published on 1 September 1914, he wrote

As a Mussulman I know the sentiments of our people here and through your courtesy I ask the help of your paper in calling upon the people of our religion throughout Australia to get in communication with me, in order that we may consider the best means of showing to England and Australia how we can help the Empire in this, her hour of need. We have eaten your salt and are filled with the desire to call your people our brothers.

In his letter to the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs (10 November 1914), in support of his application for naturalisation, he laments his 'wretched position' as 'an enemy of the British community', a position forced upon him through no fault of his own, and is fervent in his desire to 'demonstrate to the people with whom I have been living for a long period that my loyalty to the British Crown and the people of Australia is as strong as ever'. He also makes it clear that he has no dealings with Germans or with German firms and that he deeply deplores the state of affairs forced upon his country by 'these brutal Teutons'.

In the Sunday Times  of 25 April 1915, a fateful day, under the heading 'Neutrals in Sydney Favour Allies' he is quoted as saying 'I want to see the British flag on top everywhere. I am an Egyptian Turk of Arab parentage'. Notwithstanding The Mirror of Australia (17 October 1915) accused Mockbell of having been the former consul-general for Turkey and having fought for Turkey in the last Balkan War.  Later the same newspaper denounced his coffee salons as meeting places for Germans. (Mirror of Australia, 17 October, 1915).

From the beginning of the war he donated generously to various charities including the Red Cross and the Lord Mayor's and the Patriotic Fund. He also donated cigarettes to the army and intriguingly is supposed to have made available 'information that would have been impossible to obtain otherwise'. At the end of the war Kabell donated the 'Khedive Suite', a suite of Egyptian furniture (reputedly inlaid with mother or pearl and decorated with Arabic mottoes and valued at 700 pounds),  to a raffle in aid of the AIF Memorial and War Chest Funds (Sydney Mail, 13 November 1918).

What Mockbell made of the post-war history of Turkey is unrecorded. As we shall see, although Kabell was no doubt a flamboyant personality, his business ventures were not entirely successful despite coffee salons across Sydney bearing his name. Kabel Mockbell died on 31 October 1936 (Sydney Morning Herald 2 November 1936).

Note: The information above, which is not attributed to newspaper sources, is taken from Kabell Mockbell's various applications for naturalisation which can be viewed on line at the National Archives of Australia.

'Australian gustatory memories' in Focus

The 'Alimentary' column in Focus began with contributions from Oscar Mendelsohn's circle of friends which tended to limit its scope. Mendelsohn hoped that his journal would 'help raise eating in Australia to its rightful place as a fine art', his contention being that satisfying the senses of taste and smell was as important as satisfying those of sight and hearing. To that end he encouraged submissions from readers on eating facilities in all and any Australian cities and 'notes on food and beverages generally', assuring would-be contributors that 'we are willing to print reviews on new lines of foods and drinks as cheerfully as those of plays and books'. (Focus August 1946)

Not all his readers were as enthusiastic about the notion of raising eating to a fine art. In September 1947 Mendelsohn published a letter from 'B.C' of Milson's Point, Sydney under the heading of 'Alimentary Fan Mail',

Alimentation - phooey! I belong to the C.B.C. (Corned Beef and Carrots) cult. (Can you beat the dish, mother's masterpiece on washing day?) Candidly, Focus is generating a tribe of food fanatics. There is a nitwit element in mankind which refuses to learn the rudiments of alimentation, and flits from dish to dish in the hope of finding an elixir.

What poor old B.C. would make of our current fascination with food we can only try to imagine. However, he needn't have been too concerned that things would change in Australia any time soon.

For the September 1946 edition 'Pot' contributed another piece for the 'Alimentary' column entitled 'Australian Gustatory Memories'. Here he lamented that, although the Italian and Chinese restaurants were all 'reliable and artistic', they actually meant little in the grand scheme of things.

They have catered only to a small stratum of the community - mainly the artists and other intellectuals who have sensibly elected to carry their good living to the stomach as well as the mind - together with a still smaller section of the arty, to whom such places are mildly interesting; also, they have retained all their native character and are in no sense Australian.

According to 'Pot' breakfast was the best meal to be had in Australia, even allowing for 'the dreadful and atrociously expensive manufactured and depreciated cereals' copied from the US, the grey coffee and the 'leathery' fried eggs. He extolled 'the simple combination of a grilled steak with an egg coyly perched on it' as 'one of the few Australian culinary inventions'.

When the steak is  really grilled and not deep-fried and the egg is poached or lightly fried on both sides, and if there are some piping hot, crisp chipped potatoes on the plate, a good start of the day is assured.

He also suggested that a really good breakfast would include a selection of properly chilled fruit juices.

For lunch, 'Pot' praised the culinary inventiveness of the 'double-cut roll' which he attributed to Adelaide. This was a variant on the American triple decker sandwich, but in Adelaide, where he believed Australia's best bakeries were to be found, the fillings were of better quality and more varied than elsewhere. Most sandwiches, he implies, made use of some variation on 'flabby Kraft cheese' and 'dry, dark-hued corned beef'.

Alas steak, eggs and chips and well prepared sandwiches do not make an Australian cuisine.

Aside from one or two memorable meals, all of them pre-war, Pot had little to say in praise of Australian cooking. In general there seemed to be a lack of respect for freshness and precious little inventiveness. When it came to crayfish for example the Americans grilled them, and produced chowders or fried them in butter but the best Australia could do was a curried version which he described as 'dreadful'. Similarly in most places in Australia roast beef was 'respectable enough' but 'rather dull' when all it needed was 'the intelligent use of herbs' to make it into something much more interesting. And this from a man whose favourite breakfast was a well prepared steak, a non-leathery egg and crisp chips!

 Two things should be noted about Pot's remarks. Firstly, he was talking about food served outside the home, so we shouldn't assume that 'B.C' and other members of the Corned Beef and Carrots cult were necessarily averse to, or unfamiliar with, the use of chives and lemon thyme and rosemary as Pot suggests. And the meals he praises are all remembered from a time before there were any war time restrictions , when oatmeal porridge could be eaten with unlimited amounts of thick cream.

None the less, these themes - lack of any cuisine that could really be called Australian; lack of respect for freshness despite a preponderance of good ingredients;  simple, unadorned food that could best be described as 'dull';  a readiness to adopt manufactured and 'depreciated' products; and a general disinterestedness in the notion of eating as a 'fine art' - all raise their heads again the best part of forty years later in Michael Symons' One Continuous Picnic. But it's hard not to have a bit of sympathy for B.C and his CBC brigade. There really isn't anything wrong with a good piece of corned beef, carrots, peas, mashed potato, some white sauce, or maybe even some cauliflower cheese. Today we would call this 'comfort food', to turn to when we are tired of flirting from one new dish to the next. The secret of these 'dull' meals is all in the quality of the ingredients and, most importantly, the care of the cook. Perhaps we should consider that B.C's mother really did have the skill to produce a masterpiece on washing day.

'Focus' on food in Sydney

After Pot's review of the Melbourne restaurant scene, Focus turned its attention to eating in Sydney for the 'Alimentary' column in the next edition, July 1946. In this instance the writer was Minka Veal. Minka was the Australian born daughter of Russian-Jewish parents who had established a clothing factory in Flinders Lane - A. Wolman Pty Ltd.  Minka began her working life in the clothing factory but the business foundered during the depression which meant she had to find an alternative living. In 1937 she opened the Café Petrushka  with Jessie Sumner. Here they served Russian tea in delicate glasses and a menu of Russian specialties such as borscht, cabbage rolls and halva. Although the café closed in 1939, during its brief life it was a popular haunt of theatrical celebrities, journalists, artists and writers, the likes of Albert Tucker, Max Meldrum, Alan Marshall and Hayward Veal. Minka and Hayward were married in 1944 and left Australia in 1951. (You can read more about Hayward Veal here.)

While she only wrote this one column for Focus before the magazine folded, Minka Veal was perhaps the first female restaurant critic in Australia. With some minimal qualifications to judge other eating establishments Minka nonetheless saw Sydney through the eyes of a Melbournian. Fortunately there was some good news, since new licensing laws had been introduced in New South Wales. Although the regulations were still quite restrictive, restaurants in Sydney can now be licensed to serve wine with a meal of not less than two-courses between noon and 2 p.m. and again from 6 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. provided that all bottles and glasses had been removed from the tables by 9 p.m. Even so Minka describes Sydney as 'a city which probably has, on the whole, the worst collection of eating places for any city of its size'. The only places which remain open at night (that is after 8 p.m.) are the Repins cafes and the Monterey, where the service is good 'but the best they can offer a hungry diner is something on toast'.

Vere Mathews restaurant, in King Street, has been taken over by Tom Hills, who has made some changes. Notably the staff are now gracious and smile, they don't interrupt diners' conversations and they have learnt to present the bill face down. All of which Minka implies make the place much more civilised although she has nothing to say about the quality of the food.

Mockbell's coffee shops have a colourful history of their own which I will write about at a later date. By 1946 however Mockbell's was not to Minka's taste. She calls it 'one of the worst cafes in Sydney', 'everything about it is appalling', with its stifling atmosphere and outdated decor. Although she does grudgingly list the best things to eat there - lamb's fry, devilled kidneys, grilled chops and chicken sandwiches.

The Oriana Café in King's Cross was much more her style. With a large inside room and an open-air area 'near enough to be called a pavement cafe', the Oriana also boasted a talented pianist as well as good food, in particular their apricot cake.

Rainaud's and Prunier's were both laudable. At Prunier's in particular everything was 'tops', the meat tender, the claret 'just right', the selection of Continental dishes 'excellent' and the three rooms 'furnished in simple good taste'. At Gleneagles however she had been served 'grilled steak and roast chicken ...  which my husband certainly wouldn't eat if I served it to him at home'.

She also lavished praise on Kanimbla. Always crowded Kanimbla offered excellent value for money and a good range of dishes, huge T bone steaks and tender juicy roast duck and chicken. The 'sourcrout' here also rated highly - 'just like my mother used to make'. Plainly furnished this was' not the sort of place to linger in' but attracted clients who took their food seriously.

The Florentino, in Elizabeth Street, was popular with university students (and priests, according to Minka) since it offered a cheap meal but the food was not good. Minka found the soup was never served hot enough and there was never enough sauce on the spaghetti. Margaret Fulton also frequented the Florentino, which she says was popular with 'fringe bohemians and the impecunious'. She describes the restaurant as like a private club, a different world where 'journalists, artists and other bohemian riffraff were at ease'.

Rainauld's had been established for many years by the time Minka dined there. I am uncertain who owned Prunier's in June 1946. According to Ted Moloney, Tony Geminis opened Pruniers on 1 April 1947, but he may have taken over an established restaurant? Nonetheless Moloney considered Pruniers was still 'the place to go' in 1967 (Sun Herald 23 July) and Tony Geminis was still in charge, and the restaurant's reputation still intact, when Leo Schofield wrote about it again in 1988 (Sydney Morning Herald 17 May). Sadly there is no general history of the restaurant scene in Sydney so the details of many of these restaurants is at best sketchy.

For Minka the Chinese eating places could not compare to Melbourne.

Although I know their vegetable delicacies are unobtainable now, I cannot become accustomed to finding large quantities of sliced carrots and cauliflower in my Chinese dishes. The best of a bad lot, I think, are the Shanghai, the Modern China, the Tien Tsin and the Nankin.

The Hong Kong was the most European of the lot with salt, pepper and sugar on every table. According to Minka 'the personnel in the place seems to be the most Chinese part of it'.

And so ends her first and it seems last foray into restaurant criticism. Minka and Hayward left Australia not long after this and did not return until 1968. It would be interesting to know what she thought of Sydney's restaurants twenty some years later.



Fulton, Margaret 1999, I sang for my supper, Lansdowne, Sydney.