The Tale of Dolly and Mundy

Ok, this is the first of three tales that go with yesterday's blip. The coin is worth the grand sum of one tenth of a penny, which is spelt out in words on the back. The picture isn't very clear because I didn't really know what I was doing when taking a pic of a pic, so I'll have to rely on words to paint a better picture.

Mundy met Dolly at an 'underground' party in 1959 when he was living South Africa in the bad old days of apartheid. After his RAF service, and on completing his psychology degree at Cambridge in 1947, he had gone out there to set up the first laboratory in that part of the world for clinical and experimental EEG studies.

Dolly was not classified 'white' and in those days it was illegal to have a relationship with somebody 'across the colour line', so their romantic liaisons became somewhat fraught and had to be very secretive. When visiting their flat, Dolly had to pretend to be Mundy's maid and once they saw somebody peering at them through binoculars!

Things became really difficult, so when, in 1961, Mundy was invited to set up a similar laboratory in Accra, Ghana, he accepted with alacrity and had to slip out of the country secretly. Dolly followed not long afterwards to join him there but the press got wind of it. "Malay woman flees to join white doctor in Ghana", one headline shouted. They lived there happily for several years, enjoying the freedom offered them in this newly independent African country.

Dolly was very ill when they met, and told Mundy she would be happy if they could just have five years together. In 1966 he was invited to the Center for Cognitive Studies in Harvard and shortly after their arrival Dolly died.

So this little Ghanaian coin, is a celebration of the short time they had together.