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Bad Blood: Poverty, Psychopathy and the Politics of Transgression in Kenya Colony, 1939–59

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03086534.2011.543795

1743-9329

Will Jackson,

Medical History and Research

Abstract This article examines the inter-relationship between psychiatry and sex, both fertile fields within the recent historiography of colonialism and empire. Using a series of case files pertaining to European patients admitted to the Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi during the 1940s and 1950s, this article shows how sexual transgression among colonial Europeans precipitated, and was combined with, mental distress. Considering psychiatric treatment as a form of social control, the article investigates a number of cases in which a European patient had been perceived to have transgressed the normative sexual behaviour codes of settler society in Kenya. What these files suggest is that transgressive sexuality in Kenya was itself framed by indices, as insistent as they were uncertain, of gender, race and class. While psychiatry as social control has some degree of purchase here, more valuable is an attempt to discern the particular ways in which certain forms of sexual behaviour were understood in diagnostic terms. Men who had sex with Africans, we see, tended to be diagnosed as ‘depressed’ on arrival at the hospital but were judged to be mentally normal consequently. Women, by contrast, were liable to be diagnosed as psychopathic, a diagnosis, I argue, that helped to explain the uniquely transgressive status of impoverished European women living alone in the margins of white society. Unlike white men, moreover, women did not have to have sex with non-Europeans to transgress sexual codes: this is because female poverty was a sexual problem in a way that male poverty decidedly was not. Poor white women were marked by uncertainty over their sexual behaviour—and dubious racial identity in its turn—and the problem of social contamination was described by reference both to the polluted racial ancestry of an individual and to the prospective contamination of healthy racial stocks. This article aims to address current historical debates around sex and empire, ‘white subalternity’ and the social history of psychiatry and mental health. All names have been changed to protect patient anonymity. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was given at the University of Sheffield's Imperial History Seminar. I would like to thank the organisers of that event and, in addition, Shane Doyle, Waltraud Ernst, John Lonsdale, Jo Sadgrove and Andrew Thompson, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their comments and suggestions. All errors of fact or judgement remain my own. Notes Important recent contributions include Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India; Philips, Sex, Politics and Empire; and Briggs, Reproducing Empire. On the metropolitan context see Levine, ‘Sexuality and Empire’ and Rose, ‘Sex, Citizenship and the Nation’. Foundational volumes in the field are Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj and Hyam, Empire and Sexuality. Key texts within the wider history of gender and imperialism include edited collections by Levine: Gender and Empire; and Midgley: Gender and Imperialism. See, for example, the now-considerable literature on the control of prostitution in the British Empire: Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics; Fischer Tiné, ‘White women degrading themselves to the lowest depths’; Peers, ‘Privates off Parade’; de Vries, ‘“White Slaves” in a Colonial Nation’; Dalley, ‘Fresh Attractions’. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire; Idem, Carnal Knowledge. James Stapleton, The Gate Hangs Well, 148. See also Butcher, The British in Malaya, 204; Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, 193. Hyam, ‘Empire and Sexual Opportunity’, 89–90; Kennedy, ‘Diagnosing the Colonial Dilemma’, 169. Inter-racial sex was also excused on the grounds that it was preferable to white male impoverishment resultant from attempting to maintain a lifestyle fit for European wives. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 30. For the full account of this episode see Hyam, ‘Concubinage and the Colonial Service’. Dubow, Scientific Racism, 173; Kennedy, ‘Diagnosing the Colonial Dilemma’, 168–69; Crozier, ‘What Was Tropical about Tropical Neurasthenia?’, 525. Much of this literature has been concerned with the transmission of disease, the problem of miscegenation and the perennial colonial concern with racial degeneration. See, in particular, Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics; Donna Guy, Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires; Kennedy, Islands of White, 173–79; Dubow, Scientific Racism, 166–89; Campbell, Race and Empire, 124–25; Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 61–70. On the psychodynamic aspects of sex and empire, see, in particular, Robert Young, Colonial Desire and Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather. Influential earlier work in this vein includes that of the French psychoanalyist Octave Mannoni and the Indian social theorist Ashis Nandy. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban, 102–07, 110–17; Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 1–48. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 131. An isolated example of deviant sexuality conferring mental illness occurred in colonial Natal in 1899 when a white woman known to have had sex with African men was threatened with confinement at the Pietermaritzburg asylum. See Parle, States of Mind, 19. The notable exception being Ernst, Mad Tales. Important studies of psychiatry in colonial Africa include McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry; Jackson, Surfacing Up; Keller, Colonial Madness; Sadowsky, Imperial Bedlam; Mahone, ‘East African Psychiatry’ and Vaughan, ‘Idioms of Madness’. In each of these accounts, Europeans appear only fleetingly. Jock McCulloch, for example, whose book remains the leading account of psychiatry in Kenya, nevertheless dismissed the European insane in the colony as ‘unmanageable, alcoholic Europeans [who] “brought ruin upon themselves and their families”’. McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 23. A telling, albeit isolated, example is provided by Julie Parle who describes a white woman in Natal in 1899 being threatened with confinement at the Pietermaritzburg asylum when it was discovered she had given birth to three children fathered by black men. Parle, States of Mind, 19. In total, 220 case files were examined in the course of this study. For a comprehensive account of these case histories, see Jackson, ‘Poor Men and Loose Women’, Ch. 4–7. Key texts associated with the anti-psychiatry movement include Foucault, Madness and Civilisation; Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness; Scheff, Being Mentally Ill. Histories of psychiatry that emphasise the operation of psychiatry as social control include Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum; and Scull, Most Solitary of Afflictions. See the edited collection by Andrew Scull and Stanley Cohen: Social Control and the State. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 101, 106. Vaughan, ‘Introduction’ in Psychiatry and Empire, 2. For histories of colonial psychiatry that recognise some value in the concept of social control, see Sadowsky, Imperial Bedlam, 4–5, 93, 115. Lander, My Kenya Acres, 183. On European insanity as problematic, see Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 122, and Keller, ‘Madness and Colonisation’, 298. Arnold, ‘European Orphans and Vagrants’; Stoler, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories’; Fisher Tiné, Low and Licentious Europeans; Mizutani, ‘Degenerate Whites’. Ernst, Mad Tales, 37, 51; Idem, ‘Out of Sight and Out of Mind’, 251; Deacon, ‘Insanity, Institutions and Society’, 26, 52. Parle, States of Mind, 19. Erikson, Wayward Puritans, 6. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, 45–57. Kennedy, Islands of White, 167. Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics; Philips, Sex, Politics and Empire. In nineteenth-century India, Europeans judged to be insane were repatriated to the East India Company's own private asylum in Ealing. In Kenya, European ‘lunatics’ were either repatriated to Britain or transferred to psychiatric institutions in South Africa. Ernst, Mad Tales, 21, 162; McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 20; Beuschel, ‘Lunacy, Race and Social Order’, 32–33. Kenya National Archives (hereafter KNA): BY/2/320: Denys Finch Hatton to Principal Medical Officer, 1411, 1927; Beuschel, ‘Lunacy, Race and Social Order’, 33. McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 21; Campbell, Race and Empire, 172. KNA: AG/32/76, ‘The Removal of Lunatics (European) Ordinance’, Principal Medical Officer, to Chief Secretary, 24 Sep. 1915. McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 20; Beuschel, ‘Lunacy, Race and Social Order’, 32–33; Jackson, ‘Poor Men and Loose Women’, 127–31. KNA: AG/32/48, Ag. Solicitor General to Chief Secretary, 16 April 1937; McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 25. Jackson, ‘Poor Men and Loose Women’, 99–100. How many suffered mental problems of milder degree, left the colony of their own accord, or passed undetected by medical and police authorities remains open to question. For a discussion of admittance rates, see Jackson, ‘Poor Men and Loose Women’, 131–33. MMH: EU. F.18/58: J. Michael Vaizey, Kampala to Mathari Mental Hospital, undated. MMH: EU.M.20/57, Discharge Letter, 10 Nov. 1957: ‘Signs and Symptoms on Admission’. MMH: EU.F.22/54, Lunacy Case No. 54, 10 Nov. 1954. On black peril in colonial Africa see Etherington, ‘Natal's Rape Scare of the 1870s’; Cornwell, ‘George Webb Hardy's Black Peril’; Keegan, ‘Gender, Degeneration and Sexual Danger’; Kennedy, Islands of White, 138–47; Anderson, ‘Sexual Threat and Settler Society’; McCulloch, Black Peril and White Virtue. MMH: EU.M./6.57, Clinical Sheet: ‘Previous Health’. MMH: EU.F/21.56, Clinical Sheet: ‘Progress and Treatment’. MMH: EU.F.14/57, Clinical Sheet: ‘Personal History’. MMH: EU.F.27/55; EU.M.8/58. MMH: EU.M.14/57; EU.M.23/54; EU.M.19/56. MMH: EU.F.41/44, Clinical Sheet: ‘Progress of Case’. Some details of this case have been altered to protect the subject's anonymity. MMH: EU.M.23/54, Clinical Sheet: ‘Mental State’. European patients could be admitted to Mathari either as voluntary patients or with legal approval from a certifying magistrate. If patients were judged by doctors to be of ‘unsound mind’, they could be forcibly confined at Mathari indefinitely; voluntary patients were free to leave at any time. MMH: EU.M.23/54, Referring doctor to Mathari, 20 June 1956. MMH:EU.M.10/56, Clinical Sheet, ‘Sex’. Italics are mine. For an account of the dominant image of the Europeans in Kenya during Mau Mau, see Webster, Englishness and Empire, Chapter 5. Hyam, ‘Empire and Sexual Opportunity’; Berger, ‘Imperialism and Sexual Exploitation’. Kennedy, ‘Diagnosing the Colonial Dilemma’, 168. MMH: EU.M.2/57: Discharge Letter, 8 April 1957, ‘Information from Pre-admission Medical Legal Document’. MMH: EU.M.2/57: Discharge Letter, 8 April 1957, ‘Signs and Symptoms on Admission’. McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry, 23. Significantly, McCulloch did not have access to case files. Of the total number of Europeans admitted to Mathari, 28 per cent were noted to be alcoholic. MMH: EU.M.2/57: Clinical Sheet, ‘Personal History’; Discharge Letter, 8 April 1957, ‘Other Information and Medical History’. MMH: EU.M.2/57, Clinical Sheet, ‘History of Present Illness’; Discharge Letter, 8 April 1957: ‘Recommendation’. For other cases of male–male sex resulting in legal prosecution—across the European empires—see Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, 185–211. The way in which this information was recorded on Conti's file is itself of note. All discharge letters contained a space for ‘Recommendations’ to be supplied. These were customarily of a medical nature. In this instance, however, is entered ‘Discharged to Machakos CID’, the implication being that the retention of health and the prevention of Conti from having further sexual relations with Africans were one and the same. Because adult African men were commonly referred to as ‘boys’, the age of the people with whom Veerkamp had sex is unclear. MMH: EU.M.30/41, Medical Officer, Kisumu: Medical Report on Father Philip Veerkamp, Kakamega, undated. MMH: EU.M.30/41, Mathari to Bishop of Kisumu, 2 Sep. 1941. MMH: EU.M.30/41, Bishop of Kisumu to G. M. Rennie, Colonial Secretary, 6 Sep. 1941. MMH: EU.M.30/41, ‘Report on Philip Veerkamp’, J. C. Carothers to Director of Medical Services, 15 Sep. 1941. Ibid. MMH: EU.M.30/41, Director of Medical Services to Chief Secretary, 27 Sep. 1941. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 104, 221. Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. It is telling that when the issue was discussed after the Second World War, it was presumed to fall within the remit of African Affairs. According to the Municipal Council of Nairobi, ‘the great majority of half-castes appear to be living quite contentedly as Africans, and we consider it is in their interests that they should continued to do so’. KNA: AV/4/21, Municipal African Affairs Officer at the Municipal Council, Nairobi, 8 March 1949; KNA: AV/4/21, White Sisters School for Children of Mixed Parentage; KNA: AV/4/21, Educational Secretary to Director of Education, 28 June 1948; RN/3/36 (Nairobi County Council): Child Welfare Society; An Ordinance to Provide the Measures for the Prevention of Cruelty and Neglect of Children, Ordinance No. 12 of 1955; KNA: CS 8/22/37. See, for example, the East African Standard, 23 March 1945; 30 March 1945; 6 April 1945; 29 June 1945; 27 July 1945; 3 Aug. 1945; 11 Jan. 1946; 1 March 1946. MMH: EU.F.3/53, Clinical Sheet: ‘History of Present Illness’. KNA: AH/13/133, Commissioner for Police to Secretary of Defence, 19 March 1957. MMH: EU.F.3/53, Clinical Sheet, ‘History of Present Illness’. MMH: EU.F.3/53, Discharge Letter, 26 Oct. 1958, ‘Diagnosis’. MMH: EU.F.30/57, Mathari to patient's sister, 12 Nov. 1957; Discharge Letter, 12 Nov. 1957, ‘Diagnosis’. MMH: EU.F.30/57, Discharge Letter, 26 Oct. 1958, ‘Other information and Medical History’. MMH: EU.F.30/57, Mathari to Matron-in-Chief, Medical HQ, Nairobi, 11 Nov. 1957. MMH: EU.F.8/48, Clinical Sheet, ‘Progress and Treatment’, 27 June 1956. KNA: AH/13/133, Commissioner for Police to Secretary of Defence, 19 March 1957 MMH: EU.F.8/48, Mathari to Resident Magistrate, Nakuru, 2 July 1956. MMH: EU.F.8/48, Discharge Letter, 15 Aug. 1956. On psychopathy see Sarah McCabe and Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England, vol. II, Chapters 9 and 10; John Reed, Psychopathy; Thedore Millon et al., Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal and Violent Behaviour; Michael Cavadino, ‘Death to the Psychopath’. Reed, Psychopathy, 1; John Gunn, ‘Psychopathy’, 35. Michael Cavadino, ‘Death to the Psychopath’, 6. MMH: EU.F.13/57, Discharge Letter, 17 June 1957: ‘Age’. East African Standard, 21 Sep. 1956; 22 Sep. 1956; 19 Nov. 1956. MMH: EU.F.13/57, Discharge Letter, 17 June 1957: ‘Other Information and Medical History’. MMH: EU.F.13/57, Clinical Sheet, ‘History of Present Illness’; KNA, AV/4/21, Memorandum to Director of Education, 13 June 1955: School for Children of Mixed Parentage. MMH: EU.F.13/57, Clinical Sheet, ‘Progress and Treatment’. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge, 63, 68. Ibid., 51. On the dangers of anachronism in this context, see Ernst, Mad Tales, 172. See the case histories, for example, of Keith Sorensen: MMH: EU.M.6/58; Donald Harmiston: MMH: EU.M.104/44; Rowan Brookes: MMH: EU.M.4/59 and Benedict Adams: MMH: EU.M. 27/41. Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity. Kennedy, Islands of White, 173. It was a property of the ‘poor white’ that was common to both the African and American contexts. As one Southern slave-holder wrote: ‘There is something wrong with him, something inferior, possibly in his blood.’ N. J. Hollander, ‘The Tradition of Poor Whites’ in Culture in the South, p. 403, cited in Sylvia Cook, From Tobacco Road to Route 66, x. See also J. M. Coetzee's commentary on the South African novelist, Sarah Gertrude Millin, who herself grew up poor on the diamond fields of Kimberley: Coetzee, ‘Blood, Flaw, Taint, Degeneration’. See documentation relating to Rachel Stuart, Britta Davidson, Caroline Barraclough and Emily Acklom (these names have been changed) in KNA AH/13/132; CS/2/6/587 and AG/12/213; Jackson, ‘Poor Men and Loose Women’, 91–116.