Campaign against female genital mutilation in colonial Kenya

[5] The Kikuyu regarded female genital mutilation, which they called irua or circumcision,[6] as an important rite of passage between childhood and adulthood.

The following month the church at Tumutumu announced that all baptised members must offer a declaration of loyalty by swearing their opposition to FGM.

[14] Hulda Stumpf, an American missionary who had taken a strong stand against FGM, was murdered in her home near the Africa Inland Mission station in Kijabe in January 1930.

The Times reported that "[t]he medical evidence ... inclined to the view that certain unusual wounds were due to the deliberate mutilation such as might have been caused by the use of a knife employed by native in the form of tribal operation.

"[15] In November 1930, the Supreme Court in Nairobi, acquitting a man of Stumpf's murder, found no evidence that she had been killed because of the FGM campaign.

Our Committee has been assured by medical men, and by missionaries who have attended these women in hospital and in their homes, that the rite is nothing short of mutilation.