Arson in Southampton, 1913

(as told to John Weichel by "Kater" Matheson in the early 1990s)

NOTE: In 1913, Southampton was hit by a number of fires. As the months went on, it became
apparent that the fires were being set by an arsonist. Kater Matheson, who was Southampton's oral historian, says the fires became such a common event, that boys on their way home from school would say, "Well, see you at the fire tonight." Here, Kater tells how the man was caught.

George Selfe was employed by the CNR as roundhouse man. He started the boiler fires in the morning for the engineers and firemen to take the early train out. The wife of one of the engineers, Mrs. Arkell, (she lived in that house next to Doug Shular's, where Mrs. Dunning who owned Red and White store lived) got up in the morning to get her husband's breakfast, and it was just at the break of day. She looked out and saw this man coming along the street with two sets of hose, one over each shoulder. Garden hose. She thought to herself, That looks like Mr. Selfe, who was supposed to be getting the engine ready for Joe to take out. But she didn't think anything more of it.

That day Mrs. Arkell was uptown. The lady who lived right behind that little restaurant across from Hampton Court - her grandfather is the one who started the library here - she looked in the morning and her garden hose was missing. She told somebody that her hose had been taken that night, and Mrs. Arkell heard about this, Mrs. Arkell said, That's funny, I saw Mr. Selfe going past our place this morning with these hose over his shoulder, so they went up and told the constable - who was Jim Grey at that time - and they went down and they arrested him. They were going to take him to Walkerton. They asked him where he got the hose. The town hall had just been built, and there was a market square there. Mr. Selfe said, I found the 'ose on a piece of square ground behind the new town hall.

Anyway, there had been a hell of a lot of robbery and one thing and another around. They arrested him and took him up and there was a little bit of a stone jail right where the tourist place is (now the art gallery) - there was a weigh scale there then. They should never have torn that jail down. Anyway, they put him in there. Jim Grey went home to have his lunch to take him to Walkerton to the County Jail, and when he came back he was gone. He had just walked out of there and walked home. So they went down and arrested him.

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They searched his house and they found everything. He had broken into the jewellery store - Hillmers - and he had broken in on the night a travelling troupe was here putting on a show, and naturally they blamed it on them. He went into Bob McVittie's hardware store and took guns and what have you and then set the place on fire. Delong's drugstore was next to it. It didn't burn down, but everything was damaged by the smoke.

Well then, he set fire to the old station - and it was used as a freight shed - and he burned it down. Two or three cars of hard coal caught fire and they had to hook onto them and pull them away down a siding, and God knows how many cottages.

At his house, they found fur coats - he had been into a lot of trunks in the express place there - and plumes out of a milliner's store  - the Trelford girls had a millinery store. They found everything - diamond rings, gold watches in kettles, old kettles hanging up in the basement. He was just stealing for no good, that's all; so anyway they gave him a year in jail, and sent him back to England. They tell me he was wanted over there for murder, or some damned thing, and they tell me they put the rope around his neck.

NOTE: The Wiarton Canadian carried this story sometime later:

Geo. Selfe, who completed a year's sentence in Walkerton Jail on Friday for numerous thefts at Southampton last summer and who was suspected of having been connected with some of the fires, which were breaking out so frequently and alarming the people of that town so terribly last year, was removed by Immigration Officer Stewart of Toronto from the Walkerton jail and placed on board the train here to be shipped to the seacoast and from thence to be deported as an undesirable to England, where he lived prior to coming to Canada. According to the Immigration laws, the steamship and railway lines over which an undesirable may be brought into this country are obliged to take them back over the same route, free of charge, for deportation. (Wiarton Canadian? July, l9l4)

The newspaper also reported that Geo. Selfe attempted suicide (by hanging) while at
Walkerton.

When we were kids coming home we would part with the Grey (street ?) kids up there at MacDonald Lane. We would go one way and the Greys would go another. We would say, "Well, we'll see you at the fire tonight."