Myth of the Monocled Mutineer?

Published on Monday 6 June 2005 01:13

THE SOUND OF gunshot shattered the calm of the mild summer evening. Worshippers leaving evensong at the church of St John the Evangelist, near Plumpton, Cumbria, stopped in their tracks at the sound. On the path towards Romanway Farm, a smartly dressed young man was slumped to the ground, his trilby hat falling from his head.

So ended the nationwide manhunt for Percy Topliss, the monocled mutineer. He was just 23 when he was shot by police 85 years ago, but his life had not been short on adventures. Topliss was a man of many disguises and aliases, a private who posed successfully as a Major and Lieutenant; a debonair charmer, who talked his way into London high society; a chancer with a scam for every occasion; a desperate man who stopped at nothing, perhaps not even murder.

When he went on the run in 1920, after being found guilty - in absentia - of shooting a taxi driver near Andover, he became a cause celbre across the country. Photographs and descriptions of him appeared in every newspaper and police station. He was "sighted" in a total of 107 different places. While he hid out in the Highlands of Scotland, young men all over the country with a passing resemblance to him were hauled into custody.

His story caused controversy again in 1985 when the BBC screened Alan Bleasdale's acclaimed drama, The Monocled Mutineer, starring Paul McGann as Topliss. Conservative politicians criticised the drama, which claimed Topliss led a mutiny during the First World War at Etaples, just before the Battle of Passchendale, for its "bending of history" and "blatant left-wing bias". Percy Topliss was the subject of questions in Parliament.

Eighty-five years after he died, his story still captures the public imagination. Today on the anniversary of his death, Drew Mulholland, a research fellow in psychogeography at Glasgow Caledonian University, hopes to retrace his final journey from Carlisle Castle to the road near Romanway farm where he was shot. He says: "I don't think anything historical is ever really dead. The fact that we're still talking about Topliss 85 years later, that books have been written, that Bleasdale wrote the drama for TV, shows there is a lot about the story that still interests people. Psychogeography is about going off the beaten track, finding the resonances left by the past. "

Percy was born in 1896 in Derbyshire. The family moved to the Mansfield area in 1900. He is believed to have been beaten by his father, and spent much of his childhood living with grandparents. At the age of 11, he appeared in Mansfield Petty Sessions charged with theft, already a skilled trickster. He convinced a tailor he had been sent to collect two suits of boys clothing. Then, wearing one, he successfully pawned the other.

Topliss was a loose canon, in and out of trouble until he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1914, serving as a stretcher-bearer in Gallipoli, Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia and India. He deserted several times, and, although by law he should have been executed by the firing squad, he rejoined the Army more than once under his own name. In 1978, two journalists, William Allison and John Fairley, published The Monocled Mutineer, celebrating his role in the six-day mutiny at the army camp at Etaples. Topliss' story, they say, leads us into "one of the central enigmas of the First World War: the manner in which millions of men apparently went obediently and meekly to the slaughter at the behest of the politicians and generals". They claim that the country's official historians tried to dismiss the fact that the mutiny, involving "thousands of troops", even took place.

However, Jaynie Bilton, a distant relation of Topliss, claims in her recent book, Chasing Percy, that he was nowhere near Etaples at the time of the mutiny: "There is no confirmation that I can find that Topliss was present at the mutiny. According to records, he was on his way to Mesopotamian or India. He certainly spent some time in India, bringing back an ornament of the Taj Mahal with him, which he kindheartedly gave to one of his aunts."

Paul McGann, who has remained interested in the Topliss story since the part made him a household name, says: "I don't think he was at Etaples. The units that he served in and was attached to simply weren't around. At the same time, given the fact that he came and went, that he was a bit of a loner, and moved between people and places, it is not inconceivable that he was there.

"He became a figurehead, whether he did it or not, like Robin Hood. His story is a mixture of fact, fiction and folklore, which adds to the mystery around him. The context is still absolutely fascinating. World War I changed the British way of life. The officer class, the idea of elders and betters, died on the fields of the Somme. Topliss cocked a snook at all that because he played officers and took the piss out of officers."

Since childhood, Topliss had a gift for impersonating the upper-classes. He charmed his way into London society, frequenting luxury establishments, dating high-class women. On one occasion, he appeared at a leading tailors in a captain's uniform, bought a suit of civilian clothes and requested a room to change as he "had a party to attend". He left, having paid for the suit with a stolen cheque in an assumed name. While most people on the run seek invisibility, Topliss sported his signature gold monocle.

"As long as I live I'll never be as good an actor as he was," says McGann. "In modern times, with radio and TV, it's possible for an actor like me to learn how to do different voices, this walk, that walk. In 1916 or 1918 Topliss had no terms of reference except raw talent, his ear, his eye, his absolute balls.

"He was a working-class kid from a mining district in Mansfield, but he played officers in front of other officers. When the part came up, every actor wanted to play it, but he was a better actor than any of us were ever going to be."

On April 24, 1920, a taxi driver called Sidney Spicer was found murdered at Thruxton, near Andover. Topliss, who was back with the Army at Bulford, although technically a deserter, became the prime suspect. The inquest into Spicer's death found him guilty in absentia. His diary records: "La verdict. Rotten". If he was caught he could be hanged.

Mulholland believes that Topliss was probably mentally unbalanced, a dangerous criminal as well as a debonair rogue. His only travelling companion, after all, was his loaded gun. "I don't want to turn him into a hero. He was a bad lad. I think he probably did shoot the taxi driver. He was a bit of a bte noire, like Jack the Ripper, a mysterious figure that just melted into the background. His ability to change, to pose as other people, it was either complete madness, or incredible effrontery, probably a bit of both. His psychological state probably became more disturbed when he was on the run."

Running for his life, Topliss fled to Scotland. But while police up and down the country searched for him, he calmly played the piano in a hotel in Inverness. By the end of May, he had been living for some weeks in a dilapidated shepherd's bothy at the foot of the Lecht, near Tomintoul.

On June 1, the local police constable, George Greig, a gamekeeper, John Mackenzie, and John Grant, a tenant farmer, approached the bothy, after seeing smoke issuing from the chimney. Topliss gave his name as George Williams, an American soldier recently demobbed. Then, without warning, he pointed his gun and opened fire on them, seriously injuring Grant and Greig. While Mackenzie went for help, "Williams" calmly collected his belongings and cycled off towards Aberdeen, singing "Good-byee, don't sigh-ee, wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee..." He left an unpaid bicycle repair bill in Tomintoul, and with two attempted murders added to his list of crimes.

"The Tomintoul Outrage" caused a sensation. The Scotsman, on June 4, 1920, revealed that the "assailant... has been wandering the North Highlands for the past five weeks. Some excitement was created in the Aberdeen district... when it became known that the man who committed the outrage at Tomintoul bore a remarkable resemblance to Percy Toplis (sic)."

Topliss, meanwhile, headed south, stopping in Edinburgh to pawn his watch. On June 5 1920, he arrived at the base of the Border Regiment at Carlisle Castle. Despite being the most wanted man in England, he was given lodgings without question. The following day, in his Private's uniform, he marched off towards Penrith, accepting a cup of tea from the daughter of a gamekeeper at Newbigging.

After being approached by a local policeman, he slipped into woods, washed, shaved and changed, and continued on his way, a smartly-dressed civilian in a brown suit and Trilby hat, carrying a brown paper parcel. But the policeman was suspicious, summoned help, and three officers, along with the constable's son, confronted Topliss near the church. No words were exchanged. They commanded him to stop, and shot him.

Paul McGann remembers filming Topliss' death, a few minutes walk away from the spot where he was shot. "Afterwards, I was in a car with some of the make-up people on our way off the location. I swear to this day that just as we passed the spot where Topliss was killed, all the electrics in the car went out. The girl driving had a mild panic, I just laughed."

Many questions about Topliss' story remain unanswered: why he was shot, rather than being brought to trial; why was he the subject of such a stringent nationwide manhunt; whether or not he was at Etaples; whether he was hunted down by the secret services; whether the authorities sought to bury the less comfortable aspects of his story. But there is nothing new about this. Topliss left unanswered questions wherever he went. He took the answers with him to his unmarked grave.