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Name: MUNDY, Talbot Chetwynd Miller (born William Lancaster Gribbon)

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Nee: son of Walter Galt Gribbon

Birth Date: 23 Apr 1879 Fulham, London

Death Date: 5 Aug 1940 Manatee, Florida

First Date: 1904

Last Date: 1909

Profession: Hunter

Area: Kisumu

Married: 1. In Westminster Jan 1903 Kathleen Steele b. 1879 Blackheath, London (div.); 2. In Mombasa Nov 1908 Mrs Inez Craven Morton Elena Broom (div.) (prev. m. to Rupert Cecil Craven 1870-1959); 3. Harriette Rosemary Strafer b. 1883 Kentucky, d. 1935 (div.); 4. 1924 Sally Ames (div.); 5. 1931 Theda 'Dawn' Allen Conkey b. 29 June 1903 Connecticut, d. 26 Jan 1989 Novato, California

Children: None - one was stillborn

Author: Wrote fiction under pseudonym Walter Galt

Book Reference: Taves, Wikipedia

School: Rugby

General Information:

Taves - illegal elephant hunting - reported killing more than 50 lions - acquired a herd of 4,000 cattle that bore the brand of an official entitled to only own 2, who, admiring Talbot's nerve later employed him. With British officials on his trail, he decided to drive the herd across the border into German East Africa. Near Shirati, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, a band of fierce Masai fought Talbot and his men, taking the cattle. He received a wound in the right leg from a spear dipped in gangrene, and later it took 7 men to hold him down while the wound was cauterized with stems of grass heated in a fire. {more - in GEA}
In that country [GEA] he walked as far south as Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa. After "treking about" in German East Africa, Talbot realized that he could not make enough to live on, and took passage on a dhow for British territory. Talbot then travelled as far as present-day Uganda to the Ruwenzori range, on the north-eastern border of the Congo. According to W.R. Foran, a former poacher, colonial official and later a writer himself, Mundy was back in the British colony in late 1904, raising money as "Sir Rupert Harvey, Baronet" and was arrested and sentenced to 6 months hard labour.
Later Talbot did road work and was appointed town clerk of the frontier village of Kisumu, on the northwest shore of Lake Victoria and situated almost exactly on the equator. …………. He saw two campaigns and mastered several of the local languages, including Zulu, Swahili, Kavirondo, and Lumbwa. His work took him as far north as Kapsabit [sic], in the Nandi Highlands, the last outpost of British settlement……… When Talbot shot a rogue elephant that had been destroying the villages, the behemoth fell on top of him, breaking ribs, a collar bone and right shoulder. No European doctors were within 100 miles, so the bearers took him to Oketch [witch doctor]. His wives provided fresh sheets to reduce the fever before he set Talbot's bones by touching the nerves with his fingers, "until the muscles drew the bones into place." Talbot was then tied so that he could not move, without use of bandages or splints, and remained nearly immobile for a month. Oketch kept Talbot's mind cooperating with him during every waking moment, and later x-rays would reveal the excellence of Oketch's handiwork, with only a shoulder that dislocated easily. …………………
By this time Talbot had become involved in affairs with women from different local tribes, causing a scandal that lost him his job. He did not accept the colonial tabu or the pretense of its inviolability; throughout his oeuvre there is a motif of not only sexual contact, but also romantic love and marriage between the races, and those of mixed background. Now that he was momentarily settled, and with his health back, he contacted Kathleen [Steele who he married in 1903], explaining that he had adopted the name "Thomas Hartley", sometimes going by "Lord Hartlay".  ………. In a May 1907 letter, he acknowledged that he had been unfaithful to Kathleen and urged her to divorce him. He cooperated with the subsequent proceedings, which entailed taking testimony in Nairobi to prove a charge of adultery, a charge essential for most divorces in this era. When the decree came through, a year later, he had aslo been named in another divorce trial. Mundy had been guiding a number of hunting expeditions, with the help of Kazi Moto, and on one of these, they made the acquaintance of the rambunctious, quarrelsome Rupert Cecil Craven and his party. His wife, 35 year old Inez Broom, was regarded as one of the most beautiful women of her day, attributed to her Spanish grandmother. She had once been named as co-respondent in the notorious Chandos-Pole divorce of 1899, when her unchaperoned life made her a centrepiece of English gossip. She had left home at age 19, and became known as a daring cross-country rider who smoked and drank brandy; she described herself as a respectable but "unconventional sort of person". Inez and Rupert had been married in April 1898, and the Cravens naturally used their family influence to vindicate Inez in court - unsuccessfully.
Ten years later, when Inez met Talbot, the Cravens' marriage, which had begun so inauspiciously, was crumbling; in the subsequent divorce suit, Rupert Craven would have to admit that he was as guilty of adultery as was his wife. Inez left her husband at the beginning of 1908 and moved in with Talbot, as both were receiving their respective divorces. Inez went to London to finalize her divorce, then returned to Talbot in Africa. Shortly afterward, the man born William Lancaster Gribbon adopted a new name for the final time, Talbot Chetwynd Miller Mundy, and asserted he was the illegitimate son of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Inez and Talbot married in a town near Mombasa at the end of the year, and by then the repercussions of the scandal had again cost him his job. After he recovered from a near fatal fourth bout with black water fever, the couple decided to leave Africa for Europe and London. Ashamed of the embarrassment her eldest son had caused the family, Talbot's mother, who died 4 years later, eliminated himfrom her will after a final gift of a portion of her husband's estate. The money given by the family was quickly spent, since Inez was accustomed to a considerably higher standard of living than Talbot could provide, and his prospects were not favourable. Friends and relatives turned their backs on the couple, and Talbot's efforts to resume his career as a newspaper correspondent were fruitless. His wife's drinking was becoming a matter of growing concern. Active in the women's suffrage movement, on one march she took an axe and smashed the windows of a newspaper office where Talbot held a menial position. With the future bleak, the couple gathered the last of their resources and headed for America aboard the White Star liner 'Teutonic'. ……….. {Story of New York mugging etc.}        …………… {more}

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