Come Here To Me!

The Turkish Baths of 1860, Lincoln Place, Dublin. Our story today concerns an early forerunner of these Turkish Baths. (Image: Archiseek)

In the Dublin of the late eighteenth century, Achmet Borumborad cut an unusual shape. A tall Turkish man sporting a fine beard and wearing traditional Turkish attire, Jonah Barrington (judge, lawyer and Dublin socialite) remembered him as “being extremely handsome without any approach to the tawdry, and crowned with an immense turban, he drew the eyes of every passersby; I must say that I have never myself seen a more stately-looking Turk since that period.”

Borbumborad was literally followed through the streets of the capital by the curious, with Barrington relating how “the eccentricity of the doctor’s appearance was, indeed, as will be readily be imagined, the occasion of much idle observation and conjecture. At first, wherever he went,a crowd of people, chiefly boys,was sure to attend him, but at a respectful distance”.

A doctor by profession with immaculate English, Borbumboard quickly made his way into the upper echelons of Dublin society, wining and dining with the elite of the College Green Parliament, gaining a reputation as a fine conversationalist who was “pregnant with anecdote, but discreet in its expenditure.” He is mentioned in contemporary publications, with a poem entitled The Medical Review from 1775 describing “his foreign accent, head close-shaved or sheard. His flowing whiskers, and great length of beard.”

While the period calls to mind the privileged dueling ‘Bucks’ of Trinity College, sedan chairs on College Green and the occasional riot in the Smock Alley Theatre, eighteenth century Dublin had its fair share of poverty and misery too, evident from primary sources like the survey census of the city carried out by the Reverend James Whitelaw in the summer of discontent that was 1798. Whitelaw was horrified to report:

I have frequently surprised from ten to 16 persons, of all ages and sexes, in a room, not 15 feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw, swarming with vermin, and without any covering, save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing apparel. Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary, that I should have frequently found from 30 to 50 individuals in a house.

While groundbreaking work on the infectious nature of disease (such as that carried out by Oscar Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde) remained a long way off in the distance, many contemporary observers in the eighteenth century were aware of the poor health of the less well-off inhabitants of Dublin. Borbumborad, the man from God knows where, was among such voices. Barrington recounts how “he proposed to establish what was greatly wanted at that time in the Irish metropolis, ‘Hot and Cold Sea-water Baths’, and by way of advancing his pretensions to public encouragement, offered to open free baths for the poor on an extensive plan, giving them as a doctor attendance and advice gratis every day in the year.”

Jonah Barrington, responsible for some of the most entertaining and colourful memoirs of late eighteenth century Dublin.

With public subscription, Borbumborad succeeded in opening his Turkish Baths beside Bachelor’s Walk in October 1771, supported by dozens of parliamentarians, surgeons and physicians. The baths were a great success, Barrington proclaiming that “a more ingenious or useful establishment could not be formed in any metropolis.” Borumborad constructed “an immense cold bath…to communicate with the River, it was large and deep, and entirely renewed every tide. The neatest lodging rooms for those patients who chose to remain during a course of bathing were added to the establishment, and always occupied.”

Given Borbumborad’s popularity with the elite of the city, it became the doctor’s “invariable custom to give a grand dinner at the baths to a large number of his patrons, members of Parliament who were in the habit of proposing and supporting his grants.” Barrington recounts a great tale of one such gathering ending in disaster, when a pissed-up parliamentarian, Sir John S. Hamilton, inadvertently found himself in a bath, opening the wrong door “when splash at once comes Sir John, not into the street, but into the great cold bath, the door of which he had retreated by in mistake!” The ridiculous circumstances of a parliamentarian falling into the baths and others rushing in to his rescue greatly damaged Borbumborad’s standing among the chattering classes of the capital.

In addition to the Bachelor’s Walk Turkish Baths, Borbumborad had also operated a sort of health spa at Finglas, where he built “baths and a pump house”, convinced of the healing powers of a local well. Well beyond the city, it says something of Borbumborad’s reputation that some traveled the distance to it on account of what he himself said of the wells healing powers.

Achmet Borumborad’s story then is one of a medical professional, socialite and exotic outsider in the Dublin of the eighteenth century. Or is it? The learned philanthropist who had escaped from Constantinople was, alas, revealed to be a total invention. Having fallen in love, he revealed himself to his partner, falling to his knees and proclaiming himself not only a Christian, but “your own countryman, sure enough! Mr. Patrick Joyce, from Kilkenny County, the devil a Turk any more than yourself, my sweet angel!”.

Borbumborad vanished from the historical record, to such an extent that when Barrington wrote his colourful memoir of the late eighteenth century, he had to inform readers that “I regret that I never inquired as to Joyce’s subsequent career, nor can I say whether he is or not still in the land of the living.”

Did he ever exist at all? In 1956, Desmond Ryan took up the story for the Irish Press,  suggesting that while aspects of Barrington’s tale may be fabricated, there is indeed evidence of the “celebrated pseudo-Turk” in the contemporary press, with the Freeman’s Journal in particular pouring praise onto the Turkish baths. Drawing on the work of the great historian of eighteenth century Ireland, Dr. R.B Madden, Ryan was convinced that not only was the Borumborad name an invention of a colorful Irishman, so was Patrick  Joyce! In reality, it seems the great pretender was a Dublin-based tradesman named William Cairns. What became of him, nobody seems to know. Borbumborard’s Dictionary of Irish Biography entry ends by noting he was “no more than an opportunist seeking to make his fortune by elaborate means, a far from unusual human characteristic, and a common career path in the 18th century.”

Eventually, the Turkish baths at Lincoln Place came along, with their distinctive appearance leading to them being refereed to as “the Mosques of the baths” in Ulysses. They were a far cry from Borumborad’s experiment by the Liffey, but it is they that are today remembered thanks to James Joyce and others.