I graduated from Sheffield Hallam University in English Literature and Linguistics in the early 1990s before moving across to New Media. After being taken on by an agency in Sheffield, I worked on several popular music ezines and dot coms before returning to my two great loves of history and literature as an enthusiastic — and occasionally obssessive — hobbyist. I live in the Central Highlands of Scotland where I continue to dodge success with surprising consistency.

A Ghost Hunt with Real World Discoveries

In fairness, there’s little way of knowing whether Toplis was at the mutiny or not. No official documents have survived that can verify his whereabouts at the time of the Mutiny in Etaples in September 1917. Like that other famous impostor, Jay Gatsby, Toplis was a man with an elusive history. There are no service records, and the camp diary only records the names of those responsible for triggering the initial riots. It mentions the Red Cap, Harry Reeve by name but it doesn’t men like Jesse Short who were executed for sedition. The oral histories provided in the book by John Fairley and Bill Allison are inadequate and the story told by Edwin Woodhall is inconclusive. It’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it is.

Despite all that, it was a truly momentous time in history and the broader narratives that emerge from taking a closer look at the famous manhunt in May 1920 may help us to understand the revolutionary changes taking place in Britain, America and Russia at this time. And because of the way that the 1920s chime with 2020s, it may just be possible to get a clearer understanding of the challenges we face today, one hundred years later. I like to think of it as a ghost hunt with modern, real world discoveries.

Recently I had a hand in researching and fact-checking an 8 episode podcast from Blanchard House on the real-life inspiration for Jay Gatsby. The series is narrated by New York journalist Joe Nocera and former Sunday Times podcast producer Poppy Damon:

Contact?

I have had so much trouble with spam in the past that I’m not including an email address here, so if you’d like to chat about of these posts or have new information that might be useful. you can Direct Message me or leave a reply at Twitter [X]:
https://twitter.com/repeat_the_past

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