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
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)
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.