Percy Toplis: Traitor or Working Class Hero?

by Read Listen Learn

“To some, Toplis was a charmer who challenged the class system. But others see him as little more than a common criminal, confidence trickster and, ultimately, a murderer”

The Independent, a British newspaper

Percy Toplis was shot dead by the police in 1920. The above newspaper report appeared ninety-three years after his violent death and yet, as we can see, he remains a controversial figure. Basically, Toplis was a petty criminal of an opportunist nature. He also seems to have had a cool nerve and a talent for impersonation. Inevitably then, he spent most of his criminal career as a con man. But he was not typical. He did turn violent at times, especially towards the end of his life when he was on the run, wanted for a murder.

Another interesting aspect of Toplis was that, though from a poor, uneducated background, he preferred to impersonate an upper-class army officer and he did it surprisingly well. The accent, the mannerisms, the clothes, all had a great attention to detail that allowed him to fool upper-class people into trusting him so that he could then cheat them out of a modest sum of money.

He usually did this once trust was absolute, by asking them if they could do him the favour of cashing a cheque – somehow he had forgotten to go to the bank earlier – and, when they happily agreed to this, he wrote the cheque for a lot more than they had expected. They paid him the money just the same, not wishing to embarrass him. By the time the cheque came back from the bank, rejected, “that lovely young officer...” would be long gone.

In some powerful, upper-class circles, Toplis’ activities came to be resented on a personal level. Who was this low class upstart who first mocked their ways by imitating them so well and then stole fifty pounds here and seventy-five there by playing on their snobbery. If Toplis had only been upper-class, like them, they could have laughed at him as a nuisance.

But, Toplis was far from upper-class. He was born into a poor family in Chesterfield in the north of England in or around 20th August, 1896. For some reason, Rejoice and Herbert, his mother and father, were unable to look after him so he went to live with his grandparents. The young Percy was in trouble from an early age. At eleven, he was beaten for the crime of stealing two suits by fraud. The smooth-talking con man in him was already coming out.

After this, seeing that his grandparents could no longer control him, the courts sent him to live with an aunt. He does seem to have settled a little, staying out of trouble and in school until the contemporary leaving age of 13. He became an apprentice in a nearby coal mine but it seems that the work didn’t suit him. He argued with the managers and then left to travel freely around the country, surviving as best he could. He ended up in Scotland where, after a couple of minor offences, he was convicted of the attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl. Despite the notorious problems of getting a conviction on such a charge and despite his youth (he was also fifteen), he was given two years in prison.

He came out in 1914, just as the First World War started. He was eighteen now, and the following year he volunteered for the army and became a medic, carrying the wounded on stretchers. And it is during his war service that the mystery surrounding his life began.

Toplis served in many places, from France to Egypt but, at some point in the war, he began to change his name and military unit, switching from regiment to regiment. Often, he would pretend to be a sergeant (he kept the officer impersonations mostly for the ladies), in the confusion of world war, men came and went all the time and so he was never detected or even suspected.

He always had a false identity card, sometimes several. And so it went for the last years of the war and a while after it. Toplis lived by his wits, created dozens of different identities and stole what he could from the army.

In the meantime, the army had bigger fish to fry than the elusive Percy Toplis. By 1917, all sides in the war had become exhausted. The soldiers were dying in their millions, the civilians working long hours; and there was less and less food to eat every month. The bubble burst in Russia, a revolution put a socialist government in power, the world’s first, which said that it wanted to save the international working class from the war.

According to the new Socialist government in Moscow the war was just a way for the very rich to make yet more money, feeding like parasites on the blood of Europe’s young men. This was something that millions of ordinary soldiers and workers all over Europe were now ready to hear. Strikes and mutinies spread in France, Britain and many other countries.

These were revolutionary times and the upper classes lived in fear, having seen the fate of the ruling class in the new Soviet Union. Protesting workers were shot at, and troops who mutinied could expect nothing but a death sentence, especially in the middle of a war for national survival. Any ringleaders were seen as especially dangerous.

The worst of the British army mutinies came at Etaples, in Northern France, where there was a large training camp for new and returning troops. The place had a reputation for cruelty. Some soldiers died in the training exercises. Many of these soldiers in 1917 were men who had minor physical disabilities or were soldiers who had been seriously wounded and were now returning to active duty in France. They were all, effectively, conscripts. The camp was not a happy place; the trainees reached breaking point and mutinied. They took over the camp and refused to let the officers back in.

British army negotiators, who entered the camp under a white flag to speak to the mutineers, said that one of the ringleaders did not cover his face and wore a gold monocle. Some identified him as Toplis from army photographic records. Also, some of the mutineers present at Etaples agreed.

The mutiny was broken up using other soldiers and the surviving leaders went on the run. Capture would mean death by firing squad, and the British army and government were determined to catch them before they spread mutiny and revolution throughout the military.

The authorities were deeply embarrassed by the mutiny. It had been kept secret from the British public and they wanted it to stay secret. The post-war military and political ambitions of some very powerful men were in danger of being destroyed if the news got out. And, dead men don’t talk.

Despite strong witness evidence of his presence at and leadership of the Etaples revolt, the army didn’t appear to be after Toplis, even though he regularly dressed as a colonel and wore a gold monocle, especially if he was meeting a lady.

In 1918, Toplis returned to Britain and to his old tricks. He was convicted of fraud and sent to prison for two years. When he was released in 1920, he immediately re-joined the army, working in transport of supplies. This is where the best opportunities lay for pilfering and fraud. He made quite a bit of money selling army petrol to the local taxi drivers.

He left camp on 24th April, 1920, to conclude one of his illegal sales. He was seen back at camp at around 11pm. Some time earlier that evening, the body of George Spicer, taxi driver, was found shot dead in his car. The bullets at the murder scene came from a British army revolver. A very quick, local inquest, held in a barn, broke a centuries-old legal protocol and found Toplis guilty of murder in his absence. All the evidence against Toplis was circumstantial. If caught, Toplis could now be hanged without any trial at which he might get the chance to say inconvenient things.

Flimsy, unsafe evidence, a hurried process and an extraordinary verdict by any standards, more so with the accused not actually present. Why? From the distance of time, it looks more and more as though Toplis was being prepared for an assassination by death sentence. Toplis could see which way the wind was blowing and went on the run.

First, he spent a couple of weeks in London, posing as an officer. The police began to breathe down his neck so he took off to Wales and then went up to Scotland, probably the place he knew best. A farmer saw smoke coming from a usually empty shepherd’s hut. When a policeman came, the farmer went up with him and they burst in to find Toplis warming himself by the fire. By now, he was a desperate man and he opened fire immediately, wounding both of his surprise visitors. He made good his escape on a bicycle.

He reappeared in Carlisle, in the North of England. A policeman, somehow suspicious, stopped him and questioned him but decided to let him go on his way when Toplis pulled out a pistol and threatened him with it. Now, there came a chase by armed police. The son of the County Police chief, on his 1,000 cc motorcycle and carrying an illegal Belgian automatic pistol, decide to join the posse.

Driving around they passed Toplis on a country road. Not recognizing him at first, they continued for a few metres, then they stopped and turned their vehicles around. What happened next is disputed. Maybe they challenged Toplis and he started firing or maybe they fired first. Either way, he was hit in the chest and killed.

Some believe the fatal bullet came from a Belgian automatic pistol of a kind never used by the British police. They say he had been shot dead by the police chief’s son who had been an officer during the very recent war. That would mean it was a completely illegal shooting by a civilian carrying a hidden and illegal pistol. The police denied he was involved and said that one of the armed detectives shot Toplis in self-defence.

Toplis’ belongings, including the famous gold monocle, were given to the local museum at Penrith which is where Toplis is buried in an unmarked grave. But, the mystery of the Etaples mutiny lives on. Both the army and some researchers point to military records which seem to put Toplis on a ship to India at the time of the Etaples rebellion. Others have pointed out that both the army and the resourceful Toplis had ways of altering records and destroying files if it suited their needs. And they both had reasons why they would change the records. As a matter of certain fact, Toplis did this kind of thing all the time. Why should we take his army record as true in this particular case?

On the other hand, the army might have changed the files because they did not want a trial for Toplis, who might reveal all kinds of dirty secrets about Etaples; which isn’t to say that the army didn’t want him dead. The man who some say shot him was a former army officer with connections to military intelligence and a very powerful policeman-father in case there was to be any difficulty.

Was the shooter really just an enthusiastic member of the public who got caught up in events while trying to help the police? Or, was he an army assassin sent to make sure that Toplis was never taken alive? Some believe the police had made no attempt to arrest Toplis or call for him to surrender before they began firing at him.

In 1918, the British government held a secret inquiry into the events at Etaples the previous year but the findings of the inquiry were sealed for one hundred years. However, we can never be certain about the truth because many of the records have already been destroyed.

Percy Toplis, working class hero and Robin Hood figure, or criminal and murderer who got what was coming to him?

You decide!