Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Angl-Ind.) the principle lady of a house or establishment.

1828		Oriental Herald Nov. 347: ‘Yes, mem, I very well know, he come very often to tell my missis what news he hear of mem and Miss Owen’.
1843		G.W. Johnson Stranger in India I 162: Every one of these superlative pedlars declares he is ‘mem’s own box-wallah,’ and each protests that he ‘money not want – mem say her own price’.
1865		W.W. Knollys Misses and Matrimony 92: ‘I sold one to the Burra Sahib’s mem yesterday for two hundred rupee’.
1877		A. Allardyce ‘The Anglo-Indian Tongue’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag. May 545/1: The ‘chit’ was of course in English, which KhudaBuksh did not understand; but off he started with it to the judge’s ‘mem,’ who was at the time in want of a ‘khansamah’ .
1908		L.A. Harker His First Leave 260: ‘That’s Hayick, daddie; she’s a very big girl, but she isn’t quite a mem; she’s a specially fend of mine’.
1956		A. Burgess Time for a Tiger 19: The mems slept in adjoining beds, their dreams oppressed by servants who remained impassive in the face of hard words and feigned not to understand kitchen-Malay made up of Midland vowels.