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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

toplights n.

the eyes.

1707		N. Ward Wooden World 95: His first Labour in a Morning, is, to hawl open his Eye-lids, for it costs him many a Rub with his Paws before he can make his Top-lights to shine clearly.
1719		in Misc. Plays II 6: Bless your bright toplights.
1773		‘Amours of Lord Spindle’ in Covent Gdn Mag. II 71/1: May old Pluto knock out my toplights, if I don’t treat him like a pirate.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Top Lights. The eyes. Blast your top lights.
1805		J. Davis Post Captain (1813) 55: Heaping a thousand praises on what he called my top-lights.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: Top Lights. The eyes. Blast your top lights.
1821–6		‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 42: I don’t like his top-lights at all, at all.
1826		W.N. Glascock Naval Sketchbk I 41: Admiral’s top-lights beginning to blink.
1841		W.J. Neale Paul Periwinkle 342: Why knock my toplights out if I don’t cut over to France, and give myself up.
1841		‘The Smuggler’s fate’ in Lloyd’s Companion 26 Sept. 1/1: ‘Come, Clara, my sweet girl, cheer up, and leave off piping your toplights’.
1850		F. Chamier Life of a Sailor 168: The ball passing through the rim of yarn’s hat. — ‘That whizzed over my top-lights; —now, sir, blaze away!’ .
1872		Worcs. Chron. 3 July 4/1: He shivered his tarry toplights.
1898		A.J. Boyd Shellback 348: Dash my tarry toplights and topgallant eyebrows!

In exclamations

douse my toplights! (also blast my toplights! dash my toplights! strike my top-lights!)

a mild oath, synon. for damn (someone’s) eyes! under damn v.

1788		see sense 1.
1811		see sense 1.
1824		‘Bill Truck’ ‘Man o’ War’s Man’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag. 15 307/1: Blast my toplights!
1847		Stirling Merchant Pirate in British Drama 9 (1871) 238/1: Shiver my toplights, if it ar’n’t right-down roguery.
1849		Era (London) 4 Mar. 6/4: With a ‘shiver my timbers’ or ‘strike my top-lights’ [he] pounced and preveted a catastrophe.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Feb. 13/2: What ye want most of all, though, is a few good, first-class funerals in yer big Sydney blundering Departments, an’ ef yer don’t get them soon, dowse my top-lights, if ye won’t hev sand enough stored up to make millyunaires ov every grocer in Australia.
1886		Aberdeen Jrnl 8 May 8/7: Dash my top-lights ef a thing us would a man’s hair stand on end happened.