Sexual Threat and Settler Society: ‘Black Perils’ in Kenya, c. 1907–30

Abstract

This essay deals with ‘black peril’ scares in colonial Kenya, reviewing the evidence of reported cases of sexual assaults to provide a detailed account of their social and cultural resonance for settler society. Reported cases of assault were few in number and the outbreaks of ‘peril’ more sporadic in Kenya than in other settler societies in Africa, yet the exceptional nature of individual reported incidents of sexual assault was highly significant in shaping public perceptions of the real (or imagined) threat to ‘white purity’. Sexual assault of the innocent and helpless—children and the elderly—sparked the most vociferous of Kenya's ‘black peril’ debates, culminating in 1926 in the introduction of legislation making the rape or attempted rape of a white woman by a black man a capital offence in Kenya. Fears and anxieties about the threat of African sexuality were incubated in the hothouse of Kenya's small and insular settler community, but were also informed by a wider discourse on social morality and miscegenation that looked to other parts of the British Empire, especially Rhodesia and South Africa, and to Britain itself. Kenya's three ‘black peril’ episodes—1907, 1920–22, and 1924–26—are examined in turn. The concluding discussion then returns to broader questions of the explanation for and timing of the ‘black peril’ scares, setting the Kenyan experience in comparison with the other African cases.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Richard Waller, Jonathan Hyslop, Diana Jeater, Gail Bueschel, Maryinez Lyons and Justin Willis for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The research was supported by grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.

Notes

Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment; Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society; Bristow, Vice and Vigilance.

Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, Ch. 5.

Many studies have now viewed this from an empire perspective, among them McClintock, Imperial Leather; Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire; Strobel, European Women. For an Indian case study, see Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class. For Australasia, see Inglis, The White Woman's Protection Ordinance; Bulbeck, Australian Women in Papua New Guinea; for southern Africa, Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945. Hyam's Empire and Sexuality and, more especially, his ‘Empire and Sexual Opportunity’, documented a history of sexual relations but played down the importance of dominant structures of power, race and class. For a vigorous response, see Berger, ‘Empire and Sexual Exploitation’, and a rejoinder from Hyam, ‘A Reply’.

Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, introduction; Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, 175–81.

For an instructive example, see Hyslop, ‘White Working Class Women’, 57–81.

Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 129–33, for a useful survey of early twentieth-century European presentations of the sexuality of African women. For wider discussion of these tropes, see Gilman, Difference and Pathology; de Groot, ‘“Sex” and “Race”’, 89–131.

Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History, 45–60.

The most relevant studies are: Riekert, ‘Race, Sex and the Law’, 82–97; Pete, ‘Punishment and Race’, 102–6; Kennedy, Islands of White, 138–47 (who argues that ‘black peril’ scares coincide with peaks in white immigration); Etherington, ‘Natal's Black Rape Scares’, 36–53; Posel, ‘“Continental Women” and Durban's “Social Evil”’; Pape, ‘Black and White’, 699–720; Schmidt, ‘Negotiated Spaces’, 622–48; Krikler, ‘Social Neurosis’, 63–97; Jeater, Marriage, Perversion and Power; Cornwell, ‘George Webb Hardy's “The Black Peril”’, 441–53; Lubbe, ‘The Myth of “Black Peril”’, 107–32. For the rather different example of West Africa, see Callaway, Gender, Culture and Empire.

McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue.

Redley, ‘Politics of a Predicament’, 3.

This point elaborates upon Campbell, Eugenics and Empire, and Kennedy, Islands of White, 138–47. For the only study to deal comprehensively with aspects of sexuality in colonial Kenya, see Luise White, Comforts of Home. Weiner, An Empire on Trial, looks at the more general issues confronting British justice in Kenya.

The following account is drawn from the published Parliamentary Papers on the affair, Correspondence Relating to the Flogging of Natives by Certain Europeans at Nairobi, Cd 3256 (1907); additional papers in British National Archive [BNA] CO 533/28, CO 533/29, CO 533/30 and CO 533/31; and Paice's, Lost Lion of Empire, 211–23. Two earlier biographies of Grogan give highly romanticised versions of the incident: Wymer, Man from the Cape, 156–61; Farrant, Legendary Grogan, 115–27. For a critical account by a contemporary observer, see Ross, Kenya from Within, 170–1.

For examples, see the East African Standard (EAS), 16 March to 20 July 1907. The ambiguity of language of accusation has also been noted by Etherington, ‘Natal's Black Rape Scare’, 38–9 for Natal. See also Posel, ‘“Continental Women” and Durban's “Social Evil”’, 1.

Hayes-Sadler to Elgin (Secretary of State for the Colonies), 18 June 1907, BNA CO 533/30.

Grogan and Sharp, From the Cape to Cairo.

Paice, Lost Lion of Empire, passim.

Ross, Kenya from Within, 169.

Kennedy, Islands of White, 197, table 3.

For the relevant debates and motions of the Colonists' Association, see EAS, 5 Jan. 1907, 7, 9, and 25 Jan. 1907, 8.

EAS, 9 March 1907. For the broader arguments surrounding ‘the Indian question’, see Ross, Kenya from Within, 297–432.

For example, the report of the arrest of a ‘white law-breaker’ by a ‘native askari’, EAS, 5 Jan. 1907, 9.

‘East African Protectorate, Annual Report for 1910/11’, BNA CO 533/4, for details of court returns back to 1905.

Paice, Lost Lion of Empire, ch. 14.

EAS, 25 Jan. 1907, 8.

EAS, 8 June 1907, 3, 12.

EAS, 6 July 1907, 11.

EAS, 15 June 1907, 11, and 8 Oct. 1907. I am grateful to Gail Beuschel for these references.

The Rhodesia Women's League played a similar role: McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue, 28.

Compiled from case papers and press cuttings in Kenya National Archives [KNA] Pol 5/561.

Editorial, EAS, 22 May 1920.

‘A stitch in time’, Daily Leader, 24 May 1920.

‘To make the punishment fit the crime’, Daily Leader, 31 May 1920.

M. Cross to Commissioner of Police, 17 Feb. 1920, KNA Pol 5/561, referring to the dangers of Kenya ‘approaching a condition… which at one time confronted Natal’.

High Court Case 334/1919, Gwelo Criminal Sessions, 15 Sept. 1919, Zimbabwe National Archives, Harare. Thanks to Diana Jeater for sharing her notes on this case. See also, Jeater, Marriage, Perversion and Power, 189–90; McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue, Ch. 3.

For example, ‘Children's Peril’, Daily Leader, 9 April 1920; ‘Two Tales of a City: What a Father Thinks’, Daily Leader, 24 May 1920; ‘A Woman's View’, Daily Leader, 12 June 1920; Editorial, EAS, 22 May 1920.

The following summary is drawn from Riekert, ‘Race, Sex and the Law’, 82–97.

For commentary to this effect, see ‘Police Report: Black Peril’, undated, KNA Pol 5/561.

‘The Rape Peril’, letter to the editor, Daily Leader, 11 June 1920.

‘A Woman's View’, letter to the editor, Daily Leader, 12 June 1920.

‘Guarding Children’, an appeal from the Committee of the East African Women's League, EAS, 26 June 1920.

Vaughan, ‘Syphilis in Colonial East and Central Africa’, 269–302; Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 132–40; Dawson, ‘The Anti-Yaws Campaign’, 417–37. The problems of diagnosis in Uganda were further complicated by the presence of endemic, non-venereal transmitted syphilis: Davies, ‘A History of Syphilis in Uganda’, 1041–55; Doyle, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro.

Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 140–44, for a discussion of the importance of the idea of degeneracy in European perceptions of East African societies in the inter-war period.

‘Guarding Children’, EAS, 26 June 1920.

Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment, 4 and passim.

‘Rape Charge’, Daily Leader, 30 June 1920.

‘Report of the Special Committee on Sexual Assaults of Natives upon Europeans’ (Nairobi, 22 July 1920), para. 7, KNA Pol 5/561; ‘Rape of Small Children, 1923’, Uganda National Archives (UNA), Entebbe, Native Affairs, File 7949. Thanks to Maryinez Lyons for this source.

Provincial Commissioner, Buganda, to Chief Justice, Entebbe, 7 Dec. 1923, UNA, Native Affairs, File 7949.

However, it was reported from the outlying districts of Uganda's Northern Province that the belief was associated with gonorrhea, not syphilis: Acting Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province, to Chief Justice, Entebbe, 5 Oct. 1923, UNA, Native Affairs, File 7949.

Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya, Ch. 6 and 7; Leakey, Southern Kikuyu; Langley, Nandi of Kenya, 70–72.

For example, ‘Report of the Special Committee’, para. 7. A similar point is made by Jeater, Marriage, Perversion and Power, Ch. 7.

Thomas, Politics of the Womb. See also, Shaw, Colonial Inscriptions.

Editorial, ‘A Stitch in Time’, Daily Leader, 24 May 1920; ‘Hope at Last’, Daily Leader, 12 June 1920.

‘Report of the Special Committee’, tabled before Legislative Council, Nairobi, 22 July 1920, KNA Pol 5/561; ‘An Appeal on Behalf of an Appeal’, Daily Leader, 6 July 1920; ‘Guarding Children’, Daily Leader, 26 June 1920.

McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue, 18.

In addition to the assault cases identified, four local medical practitioners revealed twelve cases of `unexplained' venereal diseases in children, all arising in the Nairobi area. The circumstances in two cases were thought to merit the involvement of the police. Without further documentation, it is unclear what interpretation should be attached to this, but the difficulties in diagnosing venereal diseases at this time need to be borne in mind.

‘Report of the Special Committee’, 2, KNA Pol 5/561.

Ibid., final para.

Hinde, ‘The Black Peril’, 193–200. The earnestness of this article becomes apparent only when it is read in the light of the 1920 child assault scare. Cf. Kennedy, Islands of White, 140, n. 50.

‘Police Report: Black Peril’, undated, para. 5, KNA Pol 5/561.

Ibid., para. 7.

Hinde, ‘The Black Peril’, 193–7. For southern African discussion of servants, see Hansen, Distant Companions; Cock, Maids and Madams.

‘Protecting White Ladies from Assault’, Daily Leader, 16 Oct. 1922.

‘Assaults on Women’, Daily Leader, 28 Sept. 1922.

The Farmers' Journal, 29 Sept. 1922, 9–10, KNA Pol 5/561.

Spicer to Chief Secretary, 21 June 1926, KNA Pol 5/561. Spicer replaced Notley as commissioner of police in 1925.

Precis of Police Criminal Case 126/1923 (before Judge Maxwell, Supreme Court, 4 March 1924), enclosure in Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Precis of Police Criminal Case 38/1924 (before Judge Maxwell, Supreme Court case 15/1924), enclosure in Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Letter from ‘Portia’, ‘The Black Peril Commission’, Daily Leader, 2 Aug. 1920.

Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 17 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612, discussing the original petition, which had been sent by Coryndon, despatch no. 19, 19 Feb. 1925.

Grigg to Amery, 17 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612. The Colonial Office had been prepared to sanction the imposition of a life sentence for rape in 1925, but Coryndon elected not to act upon this. See minute by Strachey, 8 June 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

For the committal proceedings, see ‘Story of the Kijabe Case’, EAS, 21 June 1926; for the Supreme Court trial (Supreme Court, Nairobi, Case 60/1926), see ‘The Kijabe Outrage Case’, EAS, 4 Aug. 1926, and subsequent reports in the same newspaper for 5, 7, 9 and 13 Aug. 1926. The police case papers, including Mrs Ulyate's statements, are to be found in KNA AG 5/2630.

‘Terrible Outrage’ and ‘Editorial: The Kijabe Outrage’, EAS, 21 May 1926.

‘Full Horror of the Kijabe Story’, EAS, 24 May 1926.

Ray Ulyate had built and owned the Kijabe Hotel: ‘Story of the Kijabe Case’, EAS, 21 June 1926; Gillet, Tribute to Pioneers.

Kerr to Bown (Solicitor General), 28 July 1926, KNA AG5/2630.

President, EAWL to Commissioner of Police (Spicer), 27 May 1926, KNA Pol 5/561.

‘Kijabe Outrage’, EAS, 10 June 1926.

Precis of Police Criminal Case 193/1926 (Supreme Court, case 30/1926), enclosure in Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 28 May 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, telegram 5 June 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, telegrams 5 and 12 June 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

‘A Stronger Law for Violent Crimes’, EAS, 1 June 1926.

For the full text, in both languages, see ‘Crimes of Violence’, EAS, 5 June 1926.

‘Story of the Kijabe Case’, EAS, 21 June 1926.

Grigg to Amery, telegram 12 June 1926, and reply 14 June, BNA CO 533/612.

Text of Kitale speech by Grigg, 15 June 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Kenya Hansard, vol. 1, 1926, Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 1926, 242–57.

Lord Delamere was at this time visiting London. Scott contacted him to discuss the situation, and Delamere went to the Colonial Office to give his views. Minutes by Bottomley, 19 June 1926, BNA CO 533/612; 6 July 1926, BNA CO 533/352.

Kenya Hansard, vol. 1, 1926, 244.

Ibid., 246.

Ibid., 247–48.

Ibid., 255–57. For full details of the amendments in law, see ‘Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 5 July 1926: Repeal of Sect. 376 of Indian Penal Code’, Kenya Acts 1924–26, BNA CO 630/5.

Amery to Grigg, 3 Sept. 1926, and related papers, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 13 July 1926, BNA CO 533/612.

Grigg to Amery, 28 May 1926, claiming that, as well as the two attacks upon settler women, there had been others of which the police were aware but were unable to prosecute because the victims and their families were not prepared to give evidence. Amery quoted this to the House of Commons on 5 July 1926; all in BNA CO 533/612. Correspondence between officials in Kenya contradicts this. East African Women's League to Spicer (Commissioner of Police), 27 May 1926, asking for details of cases ‘known to police, but not made public’; Spicer to Governor, 1 June and 12 June 1926, giving details of all recent cases; and Spicer to Chief Secretary (Nairobi), 21 June 1926, specifically denying police knowledge of any further cases; all in KNA Pol 5/561.

‘Police Report: Black Peril’, para. 3, KNA/5/561.

Speech by Lt.-Col Sir Edward Grigg, before Legislative Council, 30 June 1926 (Nairobi, 1926), extract from Kenya Hansard, vol. 2, in BNA CO 533/612.

No such case was ever to come before a colonial court. It was not until 18 Aug. 1960 that the first white man was hanged in Kenya—Peter Poole, for the murder of an African who had thrown stones at his dog.

‘Editorial: The Kijabe Case’, EAS, 13 Aug. 1926.

‘Editorial: The Kijabe Outrage’, The Democrat, 14 Aug. 1926.

‘Verdict in the Soy Assault Case’, EAS, 17 April 1928. For full case papers, see KNA AG 5/2629.

For reports of both the committal proceedings and the Supreme Court trial, see KNA AG 5/2627.

‘The Kilimani Crime Expiated’, EAS, 30 July 1928.

Judicial Department, Annual Reports 1925–39.

Judge to Grigg (Governor), 23 March 1927, AG 4/5172.

Supreme Court, Nairobi, Case 136/1927, v. Karioki wa Kanyuoti, 7 Feb. 1927, KNA AG 4/5172. He was convicted under Sect. 354 of the Indian Penal Code. Other cases of a similar nature are discussed in the same file.

Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History, 45–60.

Etherington, ‘Natal's Black Rape Scare’, 50–52; Kennedy, Islands of White, 145–46.

Redley, ‘Politics of a Predicament’, 160.

Ibid., 6.

Minutes and correspondence, ‘Registration of Domestic Servants, 1928’, BNA CO 533/377/1; Kenya Hansard, 1927, Registration of Domestic Servants Bill, 1927, 331.

Etherington, ‘Natal's Black Rape Scare’, 36, 50–51; Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

Etherington, ‘Natal's Black Rape Scare’, 41–47; Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History, 50–53; Kennedy, Islands of White, 138.

McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue, 11.

Dowd-Hall, Revolt against Chivalry.

MacLean, ‘The Leo Frank Case’, 917–48.

Hyslop, ‘White Working Class Women’, n. 9.

Correspondence Relating to the Flogging, Cmd 3256. Also quoted in Kennedy, Islands of White, 143.

EAS, 13 July 1907, 7.

Daily Mail, quoted in Wymer, Man From the Cape, 160; ‘The Press on the Unlawful Assembly’, EAS, 27 April 1907, 6.

Hinde, ‘The Black Peril’, 193–200.

Redley, ‘Politics of a Predicament’, 12, 54.

Hyam, Empire and Sexuality, 214.