Talk by Grant Richardson
Grant recounted the story of a little-known incident occurring during and after the First World War. It’s shrouded in mystery and inconsistencies and so we were invited to make up our own minds as to the plausibility of a man called Percy Toplis being ‘The Monocled Mutineer’.
(The following full copy of the text of his presentation was kindly supplied by Grant for copying to our website)
Francis Percy Toplis was a criminal and imposter active before, during and after the First World War. Before the war he was imprisoned for attempted rape. During the war he served as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but regularly posed as an officer while on leave, wearing a monocle. After the war he became notorious following the murder of a taxi driver and the wounding of a police officer who attempted to apprehend him. The manhunt was major news at the time. He was tracked down and killed in a gunfight with police.
Francis Percy Toplis, was born at Sanforth Street, Chesterfield, Derbyshire and christened on 25 September 1896 at Skegby. His parents, Herbert and Rejoice Elizabeth were unable to support him and he was raised by his grandparents. He was educated at South Normanton Elementary School, where he was reportedly an unruly bully who was frequently caned. In March 1908, aged 11, he was birched for acquiring two suits using false pretences, one he wore while attempting to pawn the other. His grandparents were no longer able to control him and the court released him to his aunt, Annie Webster. Toplis left school in 1910 aged 13, and became a blacksmith’s apprentice at the Blackwell colliery, but after a poor attendance record and an argument with the pit manager after being caught in a pub when he should have been on a night shift, he took to an itinerant life in Scotland. In 1911 he was sentenced to ten days imprisonment in Dumfries for the non-payment of two train tickets. He returned to England.
In 1912 it is alleged that aged 15, Toplis was sentenced to two years hard labour for the attempted rape of 15-year-old farmer’s daughter Nellie North at Sutton-on-Sea in Lincolnshire, serving his sentence in Lincoln Prison and released in 1914, but whilst Percy’s name is entered in the records of the Quarter Sessions for the assault on Nellie North, the Boston Guardian of 9 March reports that the man charged at Alford Police Station was James Toplis. It was reported that Toplis had followed the girl past Brown’s Farm and assaulted her at a railway crossing. After her ordeal the girl was examined at a surgery in Mablethorpe where signs of “force and violence were found.” When apprehended, Toplis gave his name as William Edmundston of Sutton and claimed that he had been on his way to Skegness to visit an uncle. The Census of 1911 shows that farm labourer James Toplis was living with his 12-year-old son Walter James Toplis in nearby Withern in Alford at the time of the incident. Blackwell in Mansfield is some 85 miles away. Possibly a case of mistaken identity.
In 1915, the year after the outbreak of the First World War, Toplis joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served as a stretcher bearer, his first active duty being at Loos. His unit was shipped to the landings of Gallipoli, and when they returned, Toplis was hospitalised with dysentery. After UK hospitalisation he was given light work in a munitions factory at Gretna. This was before being posted to trooping duties in Salonika and Egypt. He developed malaria, possibly a result of Gallipoli and had to be shipped home. September 1917 saw him seconded to the troop-ship Orantes, en-route for India. He remained in Bombay for several months. Back in the UK he went to RAMC Blackpool, from which he deserted shortly after the death of his father in August 1918.
Toplis made a public revisit to Blackwell where he had been an apprentice posing in the uniform of a captain. The visit and some of his anecdotes were reported by the local newspaper, the Nottingham Evening Post, who took a photograph that they later released to the police for his “wanted” notice in 1920.
In 1978 William Allison and John Fairley published The Monocled Mutineer, in which they portray Percy Toplis as a leading participant in the Étaples mutiny as a consequence of his being among a band of deserters based in that area of France. They say that Toplis was sought in France following the mutiny and posters for his arrest were issued. The fact that the British authorities went to such lengths to apprehend or silence Toplis is thought by Allison and Fairley to add credence to the view that he was one of the only leaders of the mutiny that escaped retribution.
Before the war, Étaples, 15 miles (24 km) south of Boulogne-sur-Mer, was a coastal fishing port with a fleet of trawlers. It also attracted artists from around the world.
After 1914, the town became one of a series of British Army bases that stretched along the Channel coast of France. Étaples did not impress British women who volunteered to work in YMCA huts at the base. In the words of Lady Olave Baden-Powell (Wife of Robert Baden-Powell), “Étaples was a dirty, loathsome, smelly little town”. On the other side of the river was the smart beach resort known officially as Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, and unofficially as either Le Touquet or Paris-Plage. Le Touquet was in effect officers’ territory, and pickets were stationed on the bridge over the River Canche to enforce the separation.
Étaples was a particularly notorious base camp for those on their way to the front. The officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) in charge of the training, the “canaries“ due to yellow insignia worn on their uniforms, had a reputation for not having served at the front, which created a certain amount of tension and contempt. Both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans many recovering from serious wounds were subjected to intensive training on the bullring a large sand flat and dunes adjacent to Etaples camp, this would include gas warfare, bayonet drill, and long sessions of marching at the double across the dunes for two weeks before being deemed ready for the front.
On 28 August 1916, a member of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), No.3254 Private Alexander Little of the 10th Battalion, verbally abused a British Non-commissioned officer after water was cut off while he was having a shower. As he was being escorted to the punishment compound Little resisted and was assisted and released by other members of the AIF and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). Four of these men were later identified, court-martialled, convicted of mutiny and sentenced to death, including Little. Three had their sentences commuted. While the military regulations of the AIF prevented the imposition of capital punishment on its personnel, that was not the case for the NZEF. Consequently, Pte. Jack Braithwaite, an Australian serving with the NZEF’s 2nd Battalion, Otago Regiment, was considered to be a repeat offender, and after the death-sentence had been confirmed by the British Expeditionary Force’s Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, he was executed by a firing squad on 29 October 1916. His body was buried in Saint Sever Cemetery Extension in Rouen. Camp morale was low and tensions were rising at the ill treatment meted out by the training staff and provost staff of the military police (The Red caps).
A year later, On Sunday 9 September 1917, Gunner A. J. Healy, a New Zealander belonging to No. 27 Infantry Base Depot, was placed under arrest after he and other men were observed to have deliberately bypassed the military police pickets at the bridges that gave access to Le Touquet, which was out of bounds to enlisted men. His son later recalled: “It was the practice for those who wished to visit the township to walk across the estuary or river mouth at low tide, do their thing and return accordingly. However in my father’s case the tide came in, in the interval and to avoid being charged as a deserter, he returned across the bridge and was apprehended as a deserter by the “Red Caps” and placed in an adjoining cell or lock up. When news of this action reached the NZ garrison, the troops left en mass and proceeded to the lock up.
A large crowd of angry soldiers from the camp rapidly gathered near the “Pont des Trois Arches”, and in a mob moved towards the town, failing to disperse, even after being told that Healy had been released. It was clear that the protest over the arrest was only the tip of an iceberg of ill-feeling and insubordination in the camp with a mob now seeking some form of confrontation out of it. The arrival of a detachment of military police upon the scene only made matters worse, and scuffles broke out between it and elements of the mob of soldiers. Suddenly the sound of shooting broke out, with Pte. H. Reeve, a military policeman, having fired at the crowd with a revolver, killing Corporal William Buchan Wood, 4th Battalion Gordon Highlanders, and injuring a French civilian woman standing in the Rue de Huguet. Thereafter, the police detachment fled, in fear of a violent confrontation with the mass of soldiers. News of the shooting spread quickly; by 7:30pm over a thousand angry men were pursuing military police detachments, which withdrew away from the camp back into the town. The following morning measures were taken to prevent further outbreaks of disorder and police pickets were stationed on the bridges leading from the camp into the town. Nevertheless, at 4:00pm troops from the camp were in a state of disorder once more and had broken through the police pickets and moved into the town, where they held impromptu meetings, followed by sporadic protest demonstrations around the camp.
On Tuesday 11 September 1917, fearing further outbreaks of disorder that were beyond the capability of the military police to handle, the Base Commandant requested reinforcements, as further mob protests gathered momentum.
On Wednesday, 12 September 1917, in spite of a proclaimed order confining them to camp, over a thousand men broke out from its confines and marched through Étaples. Later in the day reinforcements of four hundred officers and men from the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) arrived, armed with wooden staves along with their firearms. The HAC detachment was composed mainly of officer cadet material and was a unit on which complete reliance could be placed by the military authorities. The HAC were supported by an armed Section from the Machine Gun Corps, with several Vickers guns. The arrival of this security detachment was successful in quelling the unrest, with 300 men in revolt being subsequently arrested within Étaples’ precincts without further violence.
Many of them were subsequently charged with various military offences, and Corporal Jesse Robert Short of the Northumberland Fusiliers was condemned to death on the charge of “Attempted Mutiny”. He was found guilty of encouraging his men to put down their weapons and attack an officer, Captain E. F. Wilkinson of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Three other soldiers were tried by court martial and received sentences of 10 years’ imprisonment. The sentences passed on the remainder involved 10 soldiers being jailed for up to a year with hard labour, another 33 men were sentenced to between seven and ninety days field punishment and others were fined or reduced in rank. Short was executed by firing squad on 4 October 1917 at Boulogne. His body was buried in Boulogne Eastern Cemetery. It should be noted that at the time of this insurrection the third battle of Ypres was about to commence. The Etaples mutiny was by no means the largest or only mutiny suffered by the British army of the time, but it was the first. In April 1917 the French army had mutinied after the unsuccessful and costly Second Battle of the Aisne.
In 1978 William Allison and John Fairley published The Monocled Mutineer, in which they portray Percy Toplis as a leading participant in the Étaples mutiny as a consequence of his being among a band of deserters based in that area of France. They say that Toplis was sought in France following the mutiny and posters for his arrest were issued. The fact that the British authorities went to such lengths to apprehend or silence Toplis is thought by Allison and Fairley to add credence to the view that he was one of the only leaders of the mutiny that escaped retribution.
After the book was published, Toplis’s supposed career as a mutineer was dramatized by Howard Barker in his 1980 play Crimes in Hot Countries, in which he is portrayed as an irrepressibly subversive seducer, “irresponsible and amoral, with little concern as to the consequences of his action for others”. The 1986 BBC series entitled The Monocled Mutineer, an adaptation by Alan Bleasdale of the book in which Toplis was played by Paul McGann, portrayed him in a much more positive light. The production fuelled accusations by the Conservative government of the time of left-wing bias at the BBC. It was not only the right-wing press who denounced the accuracy of the series and the book on which it was based; the socialist historian Julian Putkowski, originally recruited as a historical advisor to the programme, also publicly criticised the ‘factual errors and misinterpretations that occur in the series’. Putkowski pointed out that it was unlikely that Toplis played any part in the mutiny.
It was thought possible that information about any involvement by Percy Toplis in the mutiny by soldiers in the training camp known as The Bull Ring at Étaples would be made clearer in 2017 when the official files regarding the mutiny were scheduled to be released into the public domain by the National Archives, but the records of the Étaples Board of Enquiry have long since been destroyed.
In August 1918, Toplis’s father died and soon afterwards Percy deserted from Blackpool. He was sentenced at Nottingham Assizes to six months in prison for fraud. When released in 1920, and still a deserter (the end of the Great War seems to have waned Army interest in such matters) he joined the Royal Army Service Corps as part of No. 2 Depot Motor Transport and was stationed at Bulford Camp, he had worked out that the British armies administration was poor, he was safer in the army than out. He was soon selling rationed fuel on the black market, forging false papers to steal other soldiers’ salaries and wearing a colonel’s uniform when he visited women in town. He often used a gold monocle as part of his disguise.
Toplis went AWOL again on 24 April 1920. After 9:00 p.m the same day taxi driver Sidney George Spicer was found dead from a gunshot wound on Thruxton Down, near Andover. Toplis was seen in Bulford Camp around 11:00 p.m. The inquest into Spicer’s death took place in a barn on Thruxton Down. The jury returned a verdict of “wilful murder” by Percy Toplis, foreshadowing the possibility of his execution when caught; it was the reportedly the first British inquest in modern times to declare a man guilty of murder in his absence.
Toplis spent the next couple of weeks in London posing as an officer. The police began to close in and he fled to Monmouth, Wales. According to the Dundee Courier of 7 May, a cap with the Toplis’s name in it was found in Pontypool, just 11 miles from Ebbw Vale. A week later there was a sighting of Toplis at a prayer meeting at the Salem Baptist Chapel in Blaina, little more than a mile from Nantyglo, the birthplace of Jesse Robert Short, the only man known to have been executed for his role in the Étaples mutiny.
A diary read at the inquest into his death suggests that on 6 May 1920 Toplis arrived in Tomintoul, Scotland and squatted in a Bothy in the hills. According to the People’s Journal of 12 June, Toplis found work as a woodcutter on a forestry and shooting estate in Dunmaglass. The same report claims that on 11 May Toplis arrived at The Temperance Hotel in Central Inverness, signing his name in the hotel register, “G. Waters”. According to the owner of the hotel, the stranger mixed freely with other guests, entertaining them on the piano and explaining he had been in Russia and was now looking for a job. His repertoire included a selection of hymns and the Russian National Anthem. Within days of his arrival at the hotel, the proprietor became suspicious and confronted Toplis, putting it to him quite bluntly, “It strikes me there is a mystery about you, young man.” Toplis is believed to have left the hotel on 13 May. After journeying as far afield as Muir of Ord and Lochrosque Toplis returned to the bothy in Tomintoul. On 1 June a farmer saw smoke rising from the chimney. He alerted Police Constable George Greig and together they found Toplis sitting by a fire. Unable to talk his way out,Toplis fired his pistol, wounding them both and then fled on a bicycle. He cycled to Aberdeen and took a train to Carlisle, where he arrived on 5 June. He had the audacity to request food and drink from the army based in Carlisle Castle.
On 6 June, in Cumberland, Police Constable Alfred Fulton met and questioned a man in “partial military dress” but let him go. Back at the station, he checked police circulars and noticed that this man matched the description of a man suspected of the Andover murder. He went back to apprehend Toplis but retreated when Toplis threatened him with a Webley Mk VI revolver. Inspector William Ritchie and Sergeant Robert Bertram, joined Fulton armed with Webley revolvers and had also disguised their uniforms. It is believed that this may have been the result of orders from the Home Office to the Chief Constable Charles de Courcy Parry. They set off by car to apprehend Toplis and were joined en route by the chief constable’s civilian son, Norman de Courcy Parry, on his motorcycle. Norman de Courcy Parry was armed with a Belgian automatic pistol, which he had brought back on his return from service during the war. They saw Toplis on the Carlisle to Penrith road at Low Hesket but did not recognise him until they had passed him and were some yards down the road. After quickly turning the car round, the group again approached Toplis. Charles de Courcy Parry stopped his motorcycle, feigning mechanical trouble. He was pretending to check the trouble, as Toplis approached. The police officers then came out and challenged Toplis, who attempted to flee and fired at them. The officers ran towards him shooting and Toplis collapsed and died. An inquest was held at Penrith Town Hall on 8 June with an immediate verdict of justifiable homicide. Some controversy as to who fired the fatal round still circulates particularly if it was the Chief Constables son, who it should be remembered was not a police officer. But who however denied firing any shots. Weapons can be easily and swiftly reloaded.
On 9 June, in the presence of only police, officials of the guardians, who were a charitable organisation responsible for such matters, and Rev R H Law, who despite strong opposition, insisted Toplis was entitled to a full Christian burial. Stating “This man was violently removed from this life before he could be judged on earth.“ Toplis was hastily buried without the knowledge of his family or the media in an unmarked grave due to the crimes he was accused of committing. Until recently, the location of the grave was unknown. However, with the corroboration of media images from the time of burial and information provided from Penrith Cemetery, the location of Toplis’s resting place can be located to the right of the cemetery chapel, believed to be location 77MMM 62/3. In 1980, there was an unsuccessful attempt by the Canadian Frank Dayson, a childhood friend of Toplis, to erect a headstone on the grave. A recent attempt has also been made by the descendants of Toplis to erect a headstone, however Eden District Council are unable to sell the exclusive rights of burial due to an anticipated need to re-use the burial land where Toplis is interred.
To offset the cost of his pauper’s burial his belongings, including his monocle, were handed to the Penrith Board of Guardians. The Relieving Officer, Councillor Johnstone was also a member of the Penrith Urban District Council Historical Committee. It was he who considered that, rather than be sold, it should be given to Penrith Museum, where they are on display. In 2015 a plaque was unveiled to mark the spot where Toplis was shot dead.
Of note there were three men called Percy Toplis from the Midlands recorded as having served in the First World War, could it have been one of these who was a mutineer?