ABSTRACT
On 13 February 1959, Sir Alan Lennox-Boyd, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote a secret dispatch to Sir Evelyn Baring, Governor of Kenya, attaching a copy of a letter he had recently received in London from a group of “hardcore” female detainees at Kamiti Detention Camp. Smuggled out of the camp, and then out of Kenya, the letter appealed to the “Second Queen Elizabeth” and “all members” of the House of Commons for an end to the “trouble” faced by the women detainees at Kamiti.1 The women spoke of their experiences at a place named “Kitamayu,” a camp three miles from Kamiti, in which they alleged they were “screened by force” and “beat much.”2 The women stated that they were “withered” and “lame” as a result of these beatings: “We cannot walk because we are hurt,” they explained.3 These complaints were among a catalog of accusations that were by early 1959 surfacing in relation to the growing violence of Kenya’s detention camps, with opposition MPs regularly raising concerns about British actions in Kenya in the House of Commons.4 Anticipating that there might
soon be further questions in parliament about the conditions of Kamiti and “Kitamayu,” Lennox-Boyd requested that Baring investigate the treatment of these women, and asked for specific information on the “progress” of those Mau Mau women still in detention.5
