The grand house Jeevanjee built for pioneer Nairobi administrator Ainsworth

Colonial East Africa, throughout its settlement and control by the British, from early exploration to the State’s origin as the East African Protectorate(1895 to 1920), to its status as Kenya Colony(1920 until independence in 1963), was an environment in which missionaries, settlers and colonial authorities found themselves inextricably connected.

While the relationships between these disparate European coteries were often symbiotic, allowing each group opportunities for expansion, the associations were not without friction. Divided by socio-economic background, economic interest, cultural pursuits, moral identity and legal-political beliefs, the groups shared little beyond skin colour.

While all three parties were concerned with pacifying and proselytising Africans, they often pursued conflicting agenda according to their interests. Settlers who came to profit from the economic opportunities developed farms and reared livestock and were most focused on economic issues and protecting their investment.

Colonial administrators were motivated by economic development and political stability while the missionaries were focused on the African’s socio-political condition and disseminating religious ideology.

Colonel John Dawson Ainsworth was among the first colonial administrators to be faced with these competing interests. Born on June 16, 1864 in Urmston near Manchester, England, Ainsworth was educated privately in Rhys, Wales where his family later relocated.

He arrived in Mombasa in 1889, working for the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA). Because of his lack of university education, one Foreign Office representative referred to him as one of “a group of civil servants recruited from the gutter”.

On April 2, 1892 he was posted to Machakos to take charge of the IBEA’s badly run station there. By the time he moved his provincial headquarters to the newly founded railway centre of Nairobi seven years later in 1899, he had “pacified” the Kamba, ended their involvement in the slave trade, established cordial relations with the neighbouring, often truculent Maasai, started experimenting with possible cash crops, and was reputed to be the ablest administrator in the Protectorate.

Jurisdiction

While Ainsworth’s move to Nairobi expanded his jurisdiction and authority, it also increased his problems. Here he had to direct and control the haphazard growth of a frontier settlement that was threatening to become a “wild west”, one street town.

He was faced with an ever increasing number of immigrants, both Indians, whose bazaar created health problems, and Europeans who expected the government to provide them with free land and cheap African labour and resented Ainsworth’s attempts to stop land speculation, and to set aside “reserves” for Africans.

Initially, Ainsworth set up an office in Ngara after being repulsed from the central business district by the railway authorities who claimed jurisdiction and ownership over the latter.

However, when the East African Protectorate was moved from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office in 1901, Ainsworth showed the chaps at railways who was boss by relocating his office to Station Road (current Moi Avenue).

He also built his official residence, Ainsworth House, on what is today Museum Hill (formerly Ainsworth Hill), giving him a commanding view of the goings on in the town down below.

Built by Allibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, Ainsworth House is designed to a Victorian style with butch stone walls under a Mangalore tiled roof. A grand stairway leads to the main entrance which is collonaded in terazzo.

To the right of the stairway is a covered verandah from where Ainsworth would watch his subjects. The floor is raised on stone pillars and mostly finished in polished timber boards with cement screed to wet areas.

Doors are made of polished pannelled timber while windows are glazed in timber and steel casements with brass fittings. It was a spacious and warm family house for the time.

The building is within the compound of the National Museums of Kenya and houses, very appropriately so, the sites and monuments department.
The bridge crossing the Nairobi River was also known as Ainsworth Bridge. Later Ainsworth Hotel was built across the road and became the place of great dancing and night entertainment featuring “Club Boomerang” in the 1970s and 80s.

Notwithstanding his support for the 1904 move of the Maasai to Laikipia to provide more land for European settlement, Ainsworth’s relationship with the settlers was to be antagonistic and he was all too often accused of being pro-native in his policies.

In Nairobi, Ainsworth promulgated law and order and he was the first to introduce town planning in the municipality. He is responsible for planting many of the trees along Moi Avenue and University Way.

Moving to Kisumu in 1907, he introduced many improvements there. For his service during World War 1 he was awarded the DSO, CBE and MBE. From 1918 to 1920 Ainsworth was appointed Chief Native Commissioner whence he abolished forced labour on settler owned farms and establishments.

Cash crops

It appears that his only non-controversial activity was the continuation of his interest in development of cash crops through the founding of both the East African Agricultural and Horticultural Society , and an agricultural journal, The Agricultural Quarterly, as well as experiments on his own garden.

Ainsworth took his retirement in 1920 after 26 years in Africa. He returned briefly to Manchester but did not find it to his liking and eventually settled in Somerset West, Capetown, South Africa. Here he was elected as a councillor in 1927 and as mayor in 1929.

With declining health, aged 82, Ainsworth died on March 31, 1946. He maintained his interest in gardening up to his last days.

So much for one who was from the “gutter”. He understood the plight of the African and achieved much more than others, in similar positions, who went to the prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The author is a retired banker and motorcycle enthusiast. E-mail [email protected].