Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Alleged arsonist was just a peculiar person
People with funny names know better than to make fun of other people’s names, and so I am not going to admit why today’s Old News caught my eye. Ahem.
A century ago this week, Little Rock Police Chief Burl C. Rotenberry announced that one Charles J. Falloon, 48, had been arrested in Nashville, Tenn., and returned to Little Rock, where he was charged with burning down the Missouri Pacific railway station on the night of April 7.
We’ll get to why they thought he had done that in a second, but first, we need some background. This Mo-Pac train station was aka “the Union station” in 1920 and had been nicknamed the Union station since before it was erected
in 1908 to replace an earlier depot built in the 1870s. The 1908 Union station burned up right where Little Rock’s Union Station stands today: Markham and Victory streets. And it looked a lot like today’s structure, too, because its tower and its parts that had a metal skeleton didn’t collapse in the 1920 fire.
I had assumed that the “Union” in the depot name was the one that won the Civil War, but no. As is clear from items in the Arkansas Gazette archives from 1908 that reported the beginning of the construction, a “Union” station was a train station that served more than one railroad company and might combine passenger and freight service. (Also, the Victory commemorated by Victory Street was not the Civil War — see Mike Hood’s history: arkansas online.com/420streets.)
Now to the falloonious Mr. Falloon. He was arrested because, before leaving town April 12, he mailed four letters — written on blank bank checks — to Rotenberry, Fire Chief Charles S. Hafer, Mayor Ben Brickhouse and Gov. Charles Brough. The messages were almost identical:
“Dear Sir: Have you found out whose cigarette lit the station fire? If you have not, guess. I am not going to tell you until some more have lit lots bigger ones the same way. Then if you cannot get them I may tell you.” That was odd, but he went on:
“I should think you would know before now how all the big fires are started. If you cannot find out, after you have a few more I may tell you.” These letters were signed by Falloon. In some, the word “cigarette” was underlined.
The April 21 edition of the Arkansas Democrat reported that the railway agent who caught Falloon at Nashville knew where to look because a letter from Falloon asking a Little Rock acquaintance to forward his mail had been “intercepted.”
The April 21 Gazette reported that he told the railway agent he knew nothing about the letters but later he told Rotenberry, “I just done it as a joke.”
Among his things when he was seized were a letter from his mother in Canada dated 1906 and some business cards, including one that bore the name “Falloon Bros., Builder and Real Estate Dealers in Victoria, B.C.”
He said his brother, W.H. Falloon, was a dentist in Saskatoon, Canada. Neither newspaper reported whether Charles himself was from Saskatoon.
There was evidence he had traveled across the nation for years, including to places where big fires had occurred, such as New York.
He also had many newspaper clippings and other letters written on blank bank checks. But no “radical literature”
had been found. Radical literature — that is, Bolshevik pamphlets or a foreign book — was popularly expected to be found whenever something terrible happened that might have been caused by a troublemaker.
Falloon had other sorts of literature. Some of the newspaper clippings were about anti-cigarette movements and notes on science. He told Rotenberry that he had “a fad” of clipping articles out of papers and reading them later. He also said that he had kept some of the clippings for years.
He had a note that police said he wrote in which he attacked cigarettes, cigars and tobacco.
Asked why he wrote the note, he replied: “I was just expressing my opinion and I don’t care who knows it; I’m against tobacco in all forms.” Another note, addressed to the manager of the Florida East Coast railroad, described that system as “damnable.”
And Falloon had written a note about a lecture by an evangelist named Jimmy Delk, who failed to impress.
“I seen, heard and spoke to Billy Sunday.
Delk tries very hard to impersonate Sunday. And does very well. None of them are good Christians, too much bluff. Are generally known as grafters.” This note included the sentiment that a rummy (a drunkard) and “tobacco bums” also were not good Christians.
He had a newspaper clipping about a policeman having found the prettiest girl in the country.
He also had a letter written in Swedish that was addressed to him but which he claimed he was unable to read.
Falloon had “a foreign appearance,” the Gazette reported, but did not speak with an accent. He was 6-foot-2, weighed about 190 pounds and had very thin hair.
Among his effects were a diary that he tried to tear pages from, but Rotenberry snatched it in time. Then Falloon helped the chief decipher the diary because Falloon’s handwriting was very poor, the Gazette reported.
The Gazette reported that he’d said he was in the ice business in New York, gave that up to try farming but then traveled the country instead. He would veer off into discussions of large fires in different places and how they had been caused by smokers.
He had only $1 on his person when arrested, but he wasn’t concerned about money.
He told the Gazette he had been in Montgomery, Ala., the night of the depot fire, and only heard about it when he arrived in Little Rock on April 12. He said he was innocent, but that it didn’t matter to him how long he was held in jail. He realized he had been arrested because of his personal weakness for writing notes.
Long story short, after inquiries Rotenberry sent to authorities in other cities came back, Falloon was released May 6. The chief said the other jurisdictions confirmed his own sense that Falloon was just a peculiar man and although there was enough evidence to convict him, he was innocent.
Falloon left, and his name appeared in these papers no more.
OVERALLS
The Old News 100 years ago this week was overall gloomy and loaded with tornadoes. But the arrest of Charles Falloon from or not from Saskatoon was not its only almost joyous note of oddity.
There was a national movement afoot encouraging citizens to reject any retail clothing other than denim overalls. This was called the Overalls Club. It was a protest against the high cost of living — aka the HCL. Retailers, including Little Rock stores, reacted with ads that asked, “Why wear overalls?”
Also, and I will leave you with this, the Democrat reported that the operator of the Gentry Brothers’ Shows — a circus that would be in Little Rock that weekend — had written to the Prohibition inspector asking for a permit to purchase 3 gallons of whiskey.
The whiskey would be used to keep elephants warm on cold spring nights.
The elephant, the paper reported, is a delicate animal. Email: