Percy Toplis

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Francis Percy Toplis (August 22, 1896 – June 6, 1920) was a British deserter and impostor during World War I. He is sometimes claimed to have taken part in the Etaples Mutiny as "The Monocled Mutineer" during the war but further researchers dispute this claim.

Toplis was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. In March 1908 he was birched for getting two suits through false pretences. His parents disowned him and he moved to live with his aunt Annie Webster, who kept him out of trouble until the end of school in 1909. He became a smith's apprentice in Blackwell but later fled to Scotland. When he returned to England in 1912, he was sentenced for two years of hard labour for rape of a 15-year-old girl. He was released in 1914.

1 First World War
2 Murder and pursuit
3 Legends, claims and other tales
4 Books

[edit] First World War

In 1915, the year after the outbreak of the First World War, Toplis volunteered to join the army and was enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps where he served as an ambulance driver. His unit was shipped to the landings of Gallipoli and when they returned, Toplis was hospitalized for dysentery. Afterwards he briefly worked in an ammunitions factory. His unit was later posted to fronts in Salonika and Egypt but he was sent back when he contracted malaria. In September 1917 his unit was shipped to Bombay for some months and then returned to Britain.

In August 1918 Toplis's father died. Soon after he deserted from Blackpool. He was sentenced for two years in prison for fraud in Nottingham Assizes. When he was released 1920, he joined Royal Army Service Corps and was stationed in Bulford. He was soon selling rationed fuel on the black market, forging false papers to gain access to other soldiers' salaries and wearing a colonel's uniform when he visited women in town. He was reputedly fond of using a monocle with the uniforms.

[edit] Murder and pursuit

Toplis went AWOL again on 24 April 1920. After 9.00 p.m. taxicab driver Sidney George Spicer was found shot dead on Thruxton Down near Andover. Toplis was seen in Bulford Camp around 11.00 p.m. but he deserted. Police suspected him of the murder and the press begun to write about the Andover Murder.

Toplis spent the next couple of weeks in London pretending to be an officer. Eventually police began to close in and he fled to Monmouth and eventually to Tomintoul, Scotland.

On June 1 a farmer near Tomintoul saw smoke in a lone gatekeeper's bothy. He alerted Police Constable George Greig and together they found Toplis sitting by a fire. Toplis fired his pistol, wounding them both, and fled on a bicycle. He cycled to Aberdeen and took a train to Carlisle where he arrived on June 5. He was seen in an Army base in Carlisle Castle.

On June 6, in Cumbria, 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 gun and rode a motorcycle to Penrith police headquarters to ask for reinforcements.

Two other policemen, Inspector William Ritchie and Sergeant Robert Bertram, joined Fulton. Toplis was armed, so they took revolvers with them, disguised their uniforms, and took a car to drive back. En route they were joined by the chief constable's son Norman de Courcy-Parry, also armed. They saw Toplis walking towards Plumpton and tried arrest him near Romanway. Toplis tried to run away but when he turned to fire at the pursuing police, they shot back. One of the bullets hit Toplis's head and killed him.

On June 9 Toplis was buried in Penrith's Beacon Edge Cemetery. Posthumously, Toplis was announced guilty of the murder on Spicer. An inquest held on June 8 could not establish which one of the policemen had shot the fatal bullet, but the case was ruled justifiable homicide. Toplis's belongings, including his monocle, were handed to Penrith Museum.

[edit] Legends, claims and other tales

There are other tales about Toplis' supposed exploits in the war.

In 1978 William Alison and John Fairley published a book The Monocled Mutineer where they depict Percy Toplis as an active participant of the Etaples Mutiny. The 1986 BBC series of the same name was based of this book. The latter provoked accusation of inaccuracy and left-wing bias at the time and launched a minor political crisis in Britain.

Toplis is famous for his alleged part of the Etaples Mutiny. Some later press accounts claim that he was one of the ringleaders. However, at the time of the Etaples mutiny, Toplis was in a troopship en route to India. He was probably confused with someone with a same or similar name serving nearby.