Percy Toplis
Critics say that there is no evidence he was present and that official records show that Toplis's unit was en route to India during the Étaples mutiny.
However, the official records that are often cited to refute claims that Toplis took part in the Mutiny have been extrapolated from a summary of his movements that appear in a letter addressed to the Chief Constable of Hampshire Police from Superintendent James L.
[1] The letter, dated 17 May 1920, describes how Toplis was deployed to the Dardanelles after the outset of war in 1915 with a Field Ambulance Company, was wounded and sent home and "then went on trooping duty to Salonika, Egypt and back to the Depot and then to India in the Troopship 'Orontes'".
However, the letter from Superintendent Cox makes no mention of a 'wanted notice' that featured in the Police Gazette dated 18 October 1918 which states that Toplis deserted from Salonika on 15 June that same year.
[2] The six-month 'hard labour' sentence served on him by the Nottingham magistrate in December 1918[3] suggests Toplis did not see out his service days in Egypt or Bombay as some have alleged.
Despite the omission of actual dates in Superintendent Cox's summary of his movements during the war, many historians feel it is unlikely that Toplis was in France to participate in the mutiny.
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 he took to an itinerant life in Scotland.
[6] 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.
[5] 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.
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.
[citation needed] After the book was published, Toplis's supposed career as a mutineer was dramatised 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".
[11] 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.
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.
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.
[17] 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.
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 1000cc motorcycle.
[21] On 9 June, in the presence of only police, officials of the guardians and Rev R H Law, Toplis was afforded a Christian burial service, and 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.
[23] Whilst local and national press were generally supportive of the level of force used by the Penrith Constabulary in apprehending Toplis, The Guardian offered a more cautionary approach.
On 9 June 1920, the day that Toplis was buried, the paper wrote that although it was difficult to see how his death could have been avoided, it was "not by any means the best end that could have been put to a bad business."
[26][6] Just four months after the death of Fallows in Derbyshire, the man who had led the original Toplis investigation, Superintendent James Lock Cox of the Hampshire Police, died suddenly at his home in Andover.
[27] That same February, James Cullen, sentenced to one year's imprisonment over his role in the Étaples mutiny,[28] published the very first account of the events in the Glasgow Weekly Herald.
After serving during the war with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Cullen had deserted in January 1919 and became a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Drawing on a range of inconsistencies and implausibilities arising from the inquest into Toplis's death and from the post mortem report produced by Drs Edington and McDonald, the 2018 book, Who Shot Percy Toplis, written by Jim Cox OBE, advanced the theory that it was Norman de Courcy Parry and not Ritchie, Bertram or Fulton who fired the shot that killed Percy.
[33] The author, a former GP in the Eden Valley, reviewed the post mortem report and concluded that the path of the fatal bullet did not correspond with the version of events provided by police at the inquest.
